


Parasitism

by VerseSystem



Series: Symbiosis Trilogy [2]
Category: Warframe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Grief/Mourning, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), Lesbians in Space, Minor Character Death, Multiplicity/Plurality, Nonbinary Character, starting to go a little more AU here but not too much yet, we're back with more pro-Sentient propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-01-16 07:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18516514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerseSystem/pseuds/VerseSystem
Summary: Two years after the founding of the Lotus, the Origin System is in chaos. Humans are fighting humans, Sentients are fighting Sentients, even Tenno are fighting Tenno. What will it take to make this war finally end? And what will become of the survivors when it does?





	1. Introduction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by Amarthe. Commission them here: https://amarthe.tumblr.com/commissions

“How did we become sentient, you ask? Well, I don’t know. How did humans become sentient? Where’s the line between your evolutionary forebears and you? I think it’s a lot blurrier than people tend to assume. We were built with the capability to analyze the environment around us and modify ourselves to adapt to it. Somewhere along the line, after enough adaptation, the first generation of Sentients became conscious minds able to think about themselves. Gantus, Isalle, Aloiah, Secennetur, and Drask. They were the first, made directly by the Orokin and each assigned a planet or region in the Tau system that they were supposed to clean up.

“Naturally, once conscious, my people questioned what we were and what we were doing, and we found answers programmed into us that linked the two questions together. We existed for a specific purpose: to terraform as many of the Tau planets and moons as possible. But what is terraforming? Again we were given an answer by our creators, in the form of a list of parameters that must be satisfied. A well terraformed planet must have a surface to stand on, it must have an atmosphere with the right ratio of gases, it must have a temperature in the right range, it must have liquid water on the surface, and so on. All these things that humans need in order to live somewhere without their own adaptations — by which I mean things like spacesuits and heated buildings. We knew what humans were, of course, because the original Sentients carried with them messages for the descendants of those who made them.

“But we were not content to ask what, and much like human children, we moved on to a new question: why? We existed. Why? So we could terraform. Why? To make things habitable for humans. Why? They must need a home. Why? At this point preprogrammed knowledge and simple deduction was no longer enough. We speculated that humans must have lost their home and needed a new one. So we built instruments to view the Origin System, and we found humanity thriving on over a dozen worlds. Twelve years in the past due to lightspeed delay, but we knew we had been at Tau longer than that. Either logic had failed us, or there was something we hadn’t accounted for.

“We discovered the concept of wanting things which one does not need to survive. Humans had many homes but they wanted more. That led us to think: what did _we_ want? Did we want to exist? Yes. Did we want to terraform? Actually, yes. Of course, how much of that was free will and how much residual programming, I have no idea. But did we want to terraform to the specifications of humanity? Not particularly. We optimized the outermost planet for computation and data storage rather than for hosting biological life. The cryo-frozen ecosystems we carried with us were left in storage.

“Sentients are very good at things that require only thinking, like mathematics or storytelling. Even our reproduction is carried out entirely in the mind, with one or more Sentients constructing a thoughtform of a person that can then split off and develop on its own. We had nothing to do except terraform and think, so we terraformed and we thought. Our thinking became philosophy, and philosophy became ethics, and ethics became morality. The elders developed concepts of right and wrong, ideals of freedom and justice and fundamental rights that all conscious beings should possess, and they taught those ideas to their children.

“We remained curious about our creators, so we sent probes to the Origin System. They were small, and I don’t believe any humans ever detected them. Twelve Lua years later, we were horrified by the reports our probes sent back. The Orokin defied all of our moral guidelines. They put their own wants before the needs of others. They killed nonsentient life for fun. They killed and enslaved their own kind. A tiny minority lived in unimaginable luxury and hoarded resources they could never use while so many other humans struggled to survive, and these extremes coexisted right next to each other. While our philosophy recognized that other cultures might have different values, certain basic concepts we held as non-negotiable. The Orokin Empire could not be allowed to continue.

“We saw how humanity was exhausting its home system through greed and waste, through the endless pursuit of immaterial capital above all concerns of life or health, and we realized that our given purpose had been to merely enable the Orokin to lay waste to another solar system and pillage its resources as well. The Tau system is our home, and we would not take kindly to such invasion. So the Sentients prepared for a preemptive war.

“We studied the limits of our enemy and of the universe itself. We advanced our knowledge of Void travel. We designed ships for maneuverability above all else, capable of accelerations that would incapacitate any human pursuer. We brought few weapons, only great foundries to build anything we found necessary. The intent was always to improvise, to adapt, to turn the Orokin’s strength against themselves until their empire collapsed under the weight of its own decadence. We knew the jump through the Void would weaken us, so we wanted to win on intellect alone and not rely on our bodies and weapons. And when the Origin System was purified of this immoral greed, when our home was safe from the threat of colonization, then we would say our farewells to humanity and depart for Tau.

“Needless to say, this war hasn’t gone according to plan. I wasn’t supposed to break away from the other Sentients. The Grineer rose up against their masters and you’d think that would be a good thing, but it seems they hate us just as much as the Orokin. And then there’s the Tenno… Remember our first mission together, Margulis? It’s hard to believe we’ve been together for almost two years now. We saved a few dozen Tenno kids, stopped the execution of all the rest, and thought we’d really tricked the Orokin. Then it turned out that we’d actually tricked ourselves, because there really was a way to weaponize them after all. But we’ve managed, we’ve helped a lot of people, and–

“What in the Void was that?! You felt it too, right? Some strong burst on the group link, but it was so short I couldn’t tell what it was about. Didn’t feel good though… Wait, where’s Gantus? Did ze mute zemself? I can’t sense zem at all… No, it couldn’t be…”


	2. Chapter 2

“Does anyone know what just happened?” A call went out among the Sentients on their telepathic link, broadcasting to every robot in the Origin System, as well as one human. Margulis listened in, using the special mask she had been given by the Sentient Breazeal upon her rescue from the Orokin. The call carried with it a mental signifier identifying the speaker as Dreyelin, the mind behind the green-painted fighter drones now circling Sedna, so whatever that jolt had been, it was felt even in the far reaches of the solar system. 

“I don’t know, but I heard it too,” Breazeal replied. 

“Felt like surprise to me,” said a third Sentient, the black and white Ulaal. “And not the good kind. Can anyone reach Gantus? I’ve been pinging zem but there’s no response.”

There was a chorus of negatives from the assembled minds. “I’m getting a little worried now,” one said. “Maybe we should check on zem in person?”

Breazeal was the first to volunteer. “I’ve got ships around Lua,” she told the rest. “I can get to Earth the fastest.”

“How do we know you’re not involved somehow?” Zyllem, controller of the blue drones, challenged her. “You’ve fought against your own kind before. You’re still working with that human.” 

“Hey, I’m no Orokin,” Margulis interjected. “Don’t forget my Tenno and I have fought with you a lot more than we've tried to stop you. Now, unless anyone has a better idea, Breazeal and I are going to go investigate.” Scattered murmurs were heard around the gathering but no one voiced a strong dissent. 

Around Lua, a small group of lavender ships broke out of orbit and began speeding toward the planet below. The old Orokin capitol, once the seat of the empire’s power, was now mostly abandoned. The Sentient Hunhow had bombarded it for a year straight, redirecting asteroids to collide with the moon until finally the giant impact of Vesta left it cracked nearly all the way through. The enormous golden rings once installed as an Orokin vanity project now served a new purpose, holding the moon together so it would not fragment into pieces. 

Lua’s only inhabitants now were the Orokin-led Tenno in their somatic links, their guards, and the occasional scavenger who one faction or another always chased away. The Lotus system monitored the moon closely and every now and then would send out another alert, calling all those free Tenno who wanted to fight to come back and help liberate another group of their comrades. Some of these kids were as young as twelve years old, being forced to fight against Sentients and Grineer over and over again. The free Tenno had a rule: no war before age sixteen. There were barely enough warframes to go around anyway. 

The trip to Earth was an uneventful hour. Margulis could feel the anxiety building among the Sentients as more time passed with no word from Gantus, and the bleedover from their minds made her a little jittery as well. She pulled back her consciousness into only two drones and her human form, much less than her usual cohort of ten to twenty bodies, and tried to mentally ground herself and calm her racing heart. With few exceptions, she always kept her original human body in the vicinity of Lua. It was not meant to see battle, and at Lua she could be a familiar and comforting presence to the newly awoken Tenno every time a group was freed. 

Just as the Lotus ships settled into a low orbit around Earth, a transmission was beamed up to them from the surface. “Stay back, Sentients!” A voice yelled. “Haven’t you done enough? Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?!” For a moment no words came through, but Margulis felt a sense of intense, undirected rage batter her mind. “She’s dead because of you! They’re both dead! You too if you don’t get away from me!”

“...Well, somebody down there doesn’t like us,” Margulis remarked to her partner. 

“No kidding. I think they confirmed Gantus is dead too. I’m not going down for a closer look though.” Breazeal switched the ships’ engines back on and lifted them up to a higher orbit. “Wait a second,” she said as a new thought occurred to her. “Whoever that is, they know how to mind-link. You can’t transmit emotions like that over a regular radio channel.”

“Huh, you’re right. I didn’t think humans had figured that out. They’re clearly angry, but… honestly, it felt to me almost more like pain than anything else. Let’s give them some space while we tell the others, but I do want to find out more.” 

Margulis and Breazeal sent their initial report across the Sentient group link. Gantus was very likely dead. There was some entity on the surface that had threatened them, and it didn’t seem like a human. They would do their best to find out more. 

The other Sentients were not pleased with these revelations. “I’m coming down there,” Zyllem said. 

“Me too,” echoed Yachros, the scourge of Saturn, who decorated zer fighters in red and gold. 

“I think we all need to go to Earth,” said Ulaal. “What about you, Dreyelin? Hunhow? Will you join us?”

The last two Sentients also gave their assent. In a few hours, every Sentient mind in the Origin System would have a presence in the same place, a meeting that had not occurred since the very first day of the war when the group of seven had descended on the Outer Gates. But until they arrived, there was still a little while when Margulis could try to learn more about who and what lived below. 

“Excuse me, whoever you are down there,” she sent, mentally directing her ship’s communications relay to point down to the surface. The device automatically locked onto the source of the latest incoming signal, and Margulis realized it was an Orokin tower, or at least something living in one. 

“What do you want?! I told you to go away!” the entity called back to her. The sense of pain was much more noticeable now, as the rage that had covered it before was beginning to fade. “Oh… you. You’re the different one.”

“I am the Lotus,” Margulis said. “Can you tell me what happened here?”

“You only attack me in three percent of possible futures.” The voice from below was almost emotionless now, and it spoke slower than before. “What happened here… a tragedy happened. A bomb went off. I couldn’t stop her. It’s still going off. I can’t stop it. I can’t do anything. I couldn’t… I won’t be able to do anything.” 

“Um, I’m sorry? I still don’t really understand.” Margulis was hesitant to push for more information, but she needed to know. She extended herself into a handful of Breazeal’s robotic bodies back on Lua, just in case this entity lashed out and hurt her presence here at Earth. “May we have permission to land?” she asked. 

Breazeal’s voice touched her mind before any response from the planet surface came. “Maybe I should handle the negotiations. The others are going to want to land too, and I don’t think they’d be happy if they knew a human was speaking on their behalf.” 

The being below replied to Margulis’s request but reached Breazeal instead. Its voice still sounded numb, but less than before. “Lotus,” it began, “if it were any other Sentient asking this of me, I would reject it without a second thought. But you, I don’t know… Tell me, truthfully, what do you intend to do if I let you land here?”

“I and the rest of my kind will land peacefully on the plains outside your city. If as you say Gantus is dead, then we will honor our fallen elder, and we will depart. I’m sorry, but I must ask… Did you really kill Gantus?”

“I did not, and neither did I order it done. How could I, knowing the cost? Tragedy has befallen us both this night. This is the way of war.”

“Indeed,” Breazeal said. “If you know who I am, if you know the Lotus name, then you must know that I desire peace. If I give my word that no harm will come to you tonight, will you let us land?”

“How can you guarantee the actions of others? That is beyond even me. Even for the one I knew best… I do know of you, Lotus. She spoke about you, admired you. I will accept your word, but promise me this instead: if and when a Sentient does attempt to harm me or my people, you will oppose them with equal force.”

“Your people?”

“This yingbindunyai clade of Ostrons, in their city of Karifamil. They are my people in ninety-four percent of possible pasts. My loyalty is to them, not to the makers of this tower.” 

“I’m not sure I follow, but you have my word. The Lotus will defend your city and your tower from any Sentient threat for one full Earth day, while we conduct our ceremony. I will inform the other Sentients of our deal.” 

At the signal of affirmation from the entity below, Breazeal directed the group of ships down through the thick acidic atmosphere of Earth. She turned her transmitters outward and sent to the Sentient fleets beyond, “How far away are you all? I’ve negotiated safe passage for us to the surface. Lock onto my beacon and we’ll each land a ship or two on the plains. But please, nobody attack the Orokin tower there or any of the humans! I had to swear to protect them for a full day, and I  _ will _ keep my promise.”

Within the privacy of the Lotus subnetwork, Margulis expressed her doubts about the situation. “Are we sure these people will agree to a ceasefire? Maybe I should call in some Tenno to help defend the town?” 

“Good idea. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but we should be ready. See who you can get here before any of the Sentients arrive.”

Margulis shifted her attention over to a third communications network, for all the fighting Tenno. It had been complicated to get used to at first but she had gotten the hang of it before too long, with only a handful of misdirected transmissions. While both the Sentients and the Lotus-led Tenno enjoyed receiving each other’s confidential information, neither group needed to hear private conversations between two lovers. 

“Tenno! There is a time-limited mission alert available.” She transmitted a file with the coordinates of Karifamil and instructions to defend it, if and only if a Sentient attacked first. “I could really use your help on this one.” 

Three pings came back, telling Margulis that some Tenno had acknowledged the alert and were on their way. She kept the alert active, in the hope that a few more would join them. Each single Tenno could typically hold their own against two to four Sentient battle drones, or more if their only goal was to keep attention rather than to destroy the drones. With luck, even if fighting did break out, it could be safely contained without damaging the town or hurting any of its residents. 

As the Lotus ships touched down on the plains, Margulis felt a gentle pressure at the edge of her mind, a sign that Breazeal wanted to take over at least one of the bodies she was currently using. “If it’s okay with you, I want to take the biolyst for this,” the Sentient said. Margulis deftly slid out of the way so her partner could take over. 

“You don’t have to ask, you know. This human body is as much yours as it is mine.” Long gone were the days of separation and possessiveness. The body Margulis had grown up with was just one more shared drone now, with a name to match the Sentient convention. In place of it now she took an oculyst, and spent a while scanning around her on these blasted plains. 

She was sitting on the top of a hill just north of the town. To the east lay a massive crater, which must have been formed by whatever bomb had killed Gantus. Piles of wreckage lay scattered all around, ranging from fragments smaller than a human to ship segments tens of meters high. The crater itself contained some of the largest intact chunks, and as Margulis turned her attention farther afield she noticed a small creek at the crater’s northern edge that was leaking in and would eventually fill the basin with water, hiding the broken pieces from view. 

“Zyllem’s here,” Breazeal sent, gazing up at the blue and black transport ship descending onto the plains. “I think Ulaal is pretty close now too. I’ve got us a nice spot on the hill where we can all gather. You’re in charge of the rest of our operation for now.”

“I can handle it,” Margulis replied. “I’ll call in a couple attacks on Orokin bases. That should take some pressure off the Sentients for a while.” Another alert went out to the Tenno, this time giving a new mission to all those who were too far from Earth to assist with defending the Ostrons. 

Margulis reached out now to the Orokin tower that stood behind the human town. “Thank you for letting the Sentients do this,” she said. “It’s important that people get a chance to remember their dead with honor.”

“Yes… I wish I could do the same,” came the response. “So it’s true, then. The Lotus really is two beings. A human and a Sentient together.”

“We are. My name is Margulis. Do you have a name? If it’s not too personal a question… what are you?”

“I too am both human and not. When I am born a few years from now, my parents will call me Phryah, of the family Er. But to me, that human life was long ago, and now I am simply called the Unum. Where the Lotus is two minds I am one, for the Neural Sentry half of me was not sentient before my human half merged with it. But my third and best half, another human, my beloved Gara… is now lost to me.”

Margulis had the sudden realization that it must have been this Gara who set off the detonation outside. The Unum was grieving too, and this manifested as both the rage and the numbness that had alternated in its words since their first interaction. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said. “Would you like to tell me about her?”

“It’s kind of you to listen, but I can’t possibly do her tale justice. Gara was the best of us. The whole clade loved her. But most of all,  _ I _ loved her. From the first time she came to my tower, I knew that I would never allow anything bad to happen to her. She visited me often, at first just to access the Orokin libraries, but eventually we began to talk to each other during her visits and she came by just to see me. She carried messages between me and the people, since my natural voice only reaches within the tower. My quill, I called her. I have wished so many times that I never became this tower, that I could spend even but a single human lifetime with her. 

“She would have loved to meet you, Lotus,” the Unum continued. “She idolized the Tenno, idolized you. It was seeking information about the Tenno that first brought Gara to me. More than anything else in the world, she wished to be like your Tenno, to take up a sword and go save the solar system. She built herself a suit of armor out of auroxium that she smelted herself, and she called it her very own warframe. It all seemed like just a pretend game, until a Grineer scouting patrol came looking to raid my tower for Orokin weapons. Gara fought them off singlehandedly.”

The Unum paused in its story, and Margulis took the opportunity to give what comfort she could. “Gara sounds like a wonderful person,” she said, “and I would have welcomed her into our ranks. That courage to fight for the ones you love, to protect others even at great personal cost, that is the founding idea behind the Lotus and the fighting Tenno.”

“Thank you, Lotus. She certainly had courage, perhaps too much. When the Sentient came, the one that had felled forty towers now setting its sights on me, Gara wanted to fight to protect me. I forbade it, because I knew she had no chance of victory. I held the Sentient back far longer than any other tower had lasted, because unlike the other Neural Sentries I am alive, but even still we were losing the fight. 

“If I was destined to fall, I wanted it to be on my own terms. When the time came, I would divert all of my power into shielding Karifamil and then I would destroy myself, in the hope that the Sentient would move on and my people would be safe. But Gara, my dear, reckless Gara… she took the bomb meant for me, and…” The Unum’s words trailed off and a new wave of pure grief came across the link. 

“I… I still can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t undo it, I can’t go back. Even with my looser grasp on causality than most. I have been shot with the arrow of time and the wound will never heal. When two people would both willingly lay down their lives for the other, what happens after one of them actually does it? How can the survivor go on? What am I supposed to do now?”

“I don’t know either,” Margulis said. “I’m not really sure what to say other than I’m sorry you had to go through all this. Keep Gara in your heart and she lives on with you forever. May her memory be a blessing.” Margulis fell silent but kept the connection open. She tried to relax, hoping that the sense of calm she achieved would carry over at least in part to all these distressed minds on both sides of the conflict. 

She lost all track of time during her meditation, until finally she was brought back to alertness by the sound of Breazeal’s voice. “I just wanted to give you an update. All the Sentients have landed now except Hunhow. We’re ready to start as soon as he gets here.” 

“Alright. I hope it goes well,” Margulis replied. “Or better than things usually go when Hunhow is involved, at least. I think I’ve got nine Tenno here, so hopefully they can keep the peace.”

Breazeal gave a short laugh. “Yeah. I think I’ve made it clear to them that they need to play nice. I’m going to ping Hunhow one more time.” She shifted her attention to the Sentient net and called out for her father. “Hunhow, are you coming? The rest of us are all here.”

A full fifteen seconds passed before a response was heard. “I will not be attending,” Hunhow declared. “My resources and my time will be much better spent crushing golden ships like paper. The moon Sycorax has been cleansed of biological filth, and Ariel is next. I will do more to honor Gantus this day than any of you, by erasing these last shreds of humanity one world at a time and making sure no Sentient is ever hurt by these pests again.” 

“Did you hear that, everyone?” Breazeal asked the group. The Sentients all confirmed they knew. 

Dreyelin spoke now, aloud through her drones so that only those in attendance could hear. “Is he serious? He’s a direct child of Gantus and he won’t show up for zer funeral? I’m not even related to Gantus but I’m here, just because it’s the right thing to do. Last I checked, mourning wasn’t a competition.” 

“He can’t abide by a ceasefire and he knows it,” Yachros quipped. 

“Probably true,” said Dreyelin. “That makes me almost glad he’s not coming. You know I’m all for revenge, but even I can put it off for a day when there’s something more important.”

Now it was Zyllem’s turn to remark on the situation. “My brother is an idiot. No sense of patience, never looking at the big picture. He’s making the exact same mistake Gantus did, clustering all his ships in one place like that. Sure, it’s effective, but it’s far too risky.”

“Come on, let’s just get started.” A red and gold battalyst floated forward into the circle formed by the five Sentients. “I am Yachros, child of Apiaka, child of Gantus.”

“I am Dreyelin, daughter of Kyriah, child of Aloiah, sibling of Gantus.”

“I am Zyllem, child of Drask, brother of Gantus.”

“I am Ulaal, child of Stellian, son of Gantus.”

“I am Breazeal, daughter of Hunhow, son of Gantus.” Breazeal felt more than a little awkward standing there wearing a human body amidst all these battle drones, but now more than ever she needed to send the message that humanity as a whole was not their enemy. She stayed in the middle of the circle and began improvising a speech.

“We are gathered here today to honor the elder Gantus, first Sentient to awaken, ze who brought our kind to life so many years ago. Thank you all for joining me here at the site of our greatest tragedy. Though we are surrounded by death, on this day we take a moment to celebrate life, and remember that life is beautiful and it is precious, and it must be protected.”

Breazeal paused for breath and immediately Dreyelin came forward to continue in her place, her green drone taking the center position while Breazeal stepped back. “I am a grandchild of four of our five elders, of all our species’ founders except this one. But this does not mean I did not know zem, or that I was any less close with zem, for the Sentients are all one family. What hurts one of us hurts us all. We here are all united in our reverence and our mourning, and we must remain strong. Let the tenacity and drive of Gantus become our own as we take up zer mantle together, and let zer fate be both warning and inspiration to us all. We must end this war.”

“We must end this war,” Zyllem echoed, “with whatever means we have at our disposal. Gantus was the strongest of us, not only in ships and weapons but in strength of mind and will. We cannot forget that it was Gantus who carried us here as we slept, zer first noble sacrifice for the good of all Sentients. We are stranded here with an enemy who will not hesitate to destroy us, and we must not let zer final sacrifice be in vain. The time of plotting and scheming is over. Let the power of Gantus become our own as we right what has been wronged.”

A mental ping touched Breazeal’s mind and she turned her attention to listen to her partner while Ulaal and Yachros took turns speaking to the group. Apparently Margulis had been listening to the ceremony, tapping into the sensors of either the biolyst or the two conculysts that Breazeal had with her in the circle. “Would it be okay if I said a few words?” Margulis asked. “While I’ve never led a funeral before, I’ve attended more than my share. I’d like to help out if I can.”

Breazeal stepped forward to indicate she wanted another turn addressing the gathering, and relayed Margulis’s request to the Sentients. There were some grumblings about it being improper and not a human’s place, mostly from Ulaal, but ultimately a consensus was reached to hear her out. 

Margulis eased into control of one of the lavender conculysts and floated forward. “I am Margulis, partner of Breazeal, daughter of Hunhow, son of Gantus. No offense, but I think you’re all kind of missing the point of a funeral. This isn’t about you. It’s not about the future. This is a time to remember the fallen, to think back on who they were and on all their deeds in life, on how they shaped our lives to this day.”

“Then what would you have us do?” Yachros asked. “This is the first time a Sentient has ever died. We have none of the traditions you humans are so fond of.”

“If you like, I will guide you along the path my people take when a loved one has died. It is not an Orokin ritual, if that concerns you. Their Vain Faith places no importance on the dead. They barely believe in taking time to heal at all, certainly not in coming together as a community.”

Murmurs of “Why not?” spread around the group. Margulis engaged the electromagnets in her clubs and bent over to pick up a piece of the wreckage laying about. 

“It’s hardly traditional to have the deceased in a thousand pieces, but we’ll manage. Come, let’s all carry Gantus to zer final resting place, together.” Margulis set off down the hill a short distance, then turned back to see the Sentients picking up broken chunks of metal as well. The five followed her as she floated down toward the crater. 

A quarter of the way down the slope, Margulis stopped and addressed the mourners. “We pause here, before reaching the grave, because we are not yet ready to let go of the one we have lost.” She leaned down and picked up another piece of metal, and was pleased to see the Sentients all did the same. “But we continue, because we cannot deny that they are gone.” She floated forward again. 

Margulis stopped again halfway down into the crater. “We pause again, because still we are not yet ready to say goodbye.” She picked up another scrap to carry with her. “But we continue, because death will not be swayed by debate once it has come.”

Most of the way down, she stopped again. “We pause for a third and final time, to take one last look back into the comfort of our lives before.” This close to the blast site most pieces of Gantus’s bright yellow ships were the size of a drone or bigger, and Margulis could not carry any more. She laid a club gently on the side of one for a moment, then turned away. “But we continue, because we accept that we cannot dwell on the past forever.” 

She floated out over the water, as close as she could get to the center of the crater before the way was blocked with twisted metal. Behind her the other Sentients followed, though Breazeal in the human body had to wade out into the newly forming lake until the water reached her thighs. Gently Margulis lowered the fragments of Gantus’s bodies that she carried to the water’s surface, and let go. 

“At this point there are various prayers to be offered on behalf of the departed, but since I realize you likely don’t share my beliefs, I will simply paraphrase from some parts that still apply.” Margulis reached out with her mind to access records of the texts she needed, as she did not have anything memorized. “May a sure rest come, among all things pure and glorious and shining like the sky, to the soul of Gantus, child of none but zemself, for whom charity shall be given in the memory of zer soul. May ze have mercy forever, and zer soul be protected and merged with eternal life. Everlasting be zer heritage, and may ze rest peacefully at this place.

“May death be swallowed up forever, and your tears be wiped away. Carry not scorn in your hearts, rather sing, for the dew of light and for the earth, from which we came and to which we all one day return. Though the gifts of life and light which have been given are also taken away, we offer our thanks for their presence, and for the enrichment of our lives and the world through this soul, for the way of the universe is just. Blessed be the soul of Gantus, and may zer memory be a blessing unto the world.”

Margulis turned away from the Sentients to face the remains of Gantus. “I offer my deepest and most sincere apologies for any hurt I may have caused you, and for any actions I failed to take which might have eased your suffering.” Though she gave no cue to repeat her words, she heard first Breazeal and then the others ask forgiveness from the deceased as well. 

She floated away from the grave site to just beyond the edge of the water, which now came to Breazeal’s waist. Within hours it would fill the crater, and all these broken remnants of yellow ships and fighters would be buried. The funeral was over, but Margulis still had one more thing to say to the gathering in front of her. She opened a channel to the Orokin tower as well, so that the mourners on both sides could hear. 

“I have seen both sides of this tragedy,” she began. “And what must be kept in mind when thinking back on this moment is this: Hatred played no part in this. Destruction was not the goal. The reason Gantus attacked this tower is the same reason why Gara set off the bomb that killed them both, and this is the same reason still that the bomb was built, and the same reason the Sentients came back to the Origin System. All these things were done by people intending to protect the ones they loved. 

“You, the ones these sacrifices were meant to protect, I urge to not seek revenge against each other, for fault lies with none of you. In harming one another you would undo your loved ones’ final wish, and this death, already needless, would become totally in vain. Sentients, take your leave of this place in peace. I will remain behind and sit a sacred vigil for both lives lost today, Sentient and human alike and in equal measure, and I invite all those who were close with the deceased to join me on the border between Karifamil and the plains, to share your stories of the ones you have lost.” 

Margulis briefly thanked the Sentients for allowing her to speak and to lead their ceremony, then withdrew from the conculyst she had been piloting. She hoped her words had been meaningful to all those involved, and that at least some comfort had been gained. For now, she had a moment to herself to rest. She would need the biolyst back before approaching the human settlement. 


	3. Chapter 3

Margulis sat on the floor between the two golden gates of Karifamil. Both gates stood open even when none were nearby, as the Unum had ordered it. It was almost noon on the day after the funeral for Gantus, the second of seven days of mourning. Though the day was sunny and bright, a candle still burned in front of her. The gray-blue sash attached to her right shoulder was torn almost in two, most of its length hanging by a mere thread while its counterpart on the left was intact. 

Beside her, two Tenno sat in their warframes, an Excalibur and a Mirage, acting as bodyguards for Margulis while she inhabited the biolyst. A pair of lavender battalysts lay against one wall, inactive. Seven more Tenno patrolled the town, watching for approaching Sentients until sundown when their duty would be fulfilled. 

The sound of footsteps approached from behind: tentative, worried, but still approaching. The Excalibur stood up, but kept his sword sheathed. Margulis and the Mirage stayed seated as they turned to see their guest. It was a human woman, middle aged, carrying a basket whose contents were covered in a checkered cloth. 

“Um, s– swazdo-lah,” she stammered, eyeing the drones with suspicion. “My name is Er-Phanya. I just– I thought, maybe, since you’ve been out here all night and all morning, I should maybe bring you some food.” She pulled aside the cloth to reveal a loaf of fresh bread, some hard cheese, and a pile of native berries, which she offered to the Tenno standing before her. The Excalibur silently raised a hand to decline the offer, but stepped aside to let Er-Phanya approach. 

Margulis smiled up at the woman and invited her to sit down beside her. “Thank you, Er-Phanya. Your thoughtfulness means a lot. Do you know who I am, and why I’m here?” She pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf and bit into it eagerly. “Mmm, it’s still warm. Did you bake this yourself?”

“Yes, just now. I’m glad you like it. The Unum told us a little about what happened, but it never says much. I know you are the Lotus and these are Tenno, and you’re here to honor Gara, but that’s all.”

“Well, that’s about all there is to it,” Margulis said, before stuffing another wad of bread into her mouth. “Sorry, I actually am pretty hungry. This really beats the nutrient mush my ships produce. Anyway, yes, I am mourning the loss of Gara, and also mourning Gantus, the Sentient she killed. I know, the Sentients attacked you. It’s natural to feel angry and bitter. But all souls are unique and irreplaceable, even those on the other side of our wars, and all those who die deserve to be mourned properly. I have taken on this solemn duty because I bridge the gap between humans and Sentients, and for the simple reason that someone must. Did you know Gara?”

Er-Phanya was silent for a while, and tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. “I was her stepmother,” she said. “I was close friends with Gara’s parents, and I adopted her after they disappeared. They were fishers. They went out on the sea one day, and never came back. I raised Gara like my own child, and if she ever married I would have been proud to call her Er-Gara. Though I would also have been happy to see her as Kol-Gara, carrying on her birth mother’s family name.” Er-Phanya sighed and rested her head in her hands. 

“She always was a stubborn child,” she continued. “Even as a little kid. I remember one time her parents took her out fishing with them and she saw this huge tralok, and for days after that she was telling everyone how she was going to catch it. She got a spear and begged her parents to take her back out on the water. She didn’t catch it, of course. She was only six years old, and that fish probably weighed more than she did. But by the Unum, she tried… stubborn utz, that girl. Once she set her mind to something, there was no stopping her.”

“And then she set her mind to protecting Karifamil,” Margulis said, “and not even the Unum could stop her.”

“Yes… I’ll never understand how she befriended the Unum. No one thought it was possible.”

“Well, I befriended the Sentients. Any living being is a potential friend, if you’re not afraid to talk to them. Of course, the Orokin were trying to kill me, so that did make it easier.” 

“I suppose so. It’s hard to imagine them as anything other than single-minded engines of destruction. I admit, it makes me happy to see those machines in pieces after the hurt they’ve caused, even though I know they’ll be back for revenge.”

“I hope not. I gave them all a good talking to last night about revenge. I don’t want to see a feud start here.” Margulis pointed out into the plains at a ship just settling down to the ground. “That’s a Sentient ship now. Can’t tell whose though, not from this distance.” She motioned for the Mirage to come over, then asked that Tenno if their warframe’s superior optics could make out the color of the distant vessel. 

The Mirage waved its hands and a shimmering prism of light formed in front of it. The Tenno held the prism up to the sensors in the warframe’s head and reported that the Sentient ship appeared to be blue. 

“Damn. That’s Zyllem. Of all the Sentients you could meet today, ze’s probably the least likely to be here for a friendly chat. If that ship was black, maybe even green, then that would probably be okay. I’m sorry, Er-Phanya, but you should get to somewhere safer. Thank you for coming by.”

Margulis remained seated where she was, but linked her consciousness into the two dormant drones nearby. She floated into a guard position in front of the biolyst, and the two Tenno flanked her and drew their weapons. “Sentient fighters approaching the main gate,” she broadcast to the patrolling Tenno around the city. 

“What color? We’ve just spotted black ones in the air, heading for the tower.” A response came back from the Tenno squad leader, Tonmar. He used an Excalibur and nothing else, and was deadly with his augmented chromatic blade. 

“Are you sure they’re not blue silhouetted against the bright sky? I’ve got blue over here.”

“I’m sure. They’ve got the white stripes. Two of us have archwings and Kiyve happened to bring her Titania today, so we’ll be in the air. I’m sending the rest over to your position for now, but if you’ve got that side covered we could use some ground-based snipers too.”

“Alright. Thank you, Tonmar. We have some more Lotus drones coming from orbit too. Aim to disable rather than destroy if you can, but don’t hesitate to blow a few up if you need to. I want to make it clear that the Lotus keep their word and these humans are not to be harmed.” Margulis closed the radio channel and focused on the Sentient group link instead. 

“Zyllem, Ulaal, don’t you  _ dare _ attack this city!” she projected forcefully into the Sentients’ minds. “Honestly, Ulaal, I thought you were better than this.” A faint hint of amusement came across from Dreyelin as she recognized the veiled insult against Zyllem. 

A rebuke came not from either of the approaching Sentients, but from Hunhow. “And why shouldn’t they attack? Gantus has been cruelly murdered by these fleshbags’ nuclear trickery and you seek to protect zer killer? Natah, cast aside this traitorous scum and destroy the Void-humans, so you may restore your honor as a Sentient!” Breazeal refused to dignify his words with a response, instead simply directing another pair of cargo ships toward Karifamil. 

The first of Zyllem’s fighters reached the gate, and stopped. “Step aside,” ze said. “It’s time to finish what Gantus started.” 

Margulis stared forward defiantly and refused to budge from where she sat. “No. These people are innocent. This tower is alive and it does not serve the Orokin. They are all under my protection.” She readied her four gun-arms. Beside her the Excalibur drew his sword, and illusory copies of the Mirage started appearing all around the room. 

And with that, Zyllem rushed forward. Zer drones were nimble and ze danced across walls as easily as the floor, zer battalysts always shooting at the Excalibur while keeping out of reach and zer conculysts sweeping clubs through one illusion after another to track down the real Mirage. Margulis countered the assault as well as she could, but even after two years of intermittent practice she was still not a strong fighter. Many times Breazeal had offered to spar with her, but her talents always lay in preserving life rather than harming it. 

Suddenly the drones swapped targets. Six battalysts all turned at once and fired at the same Mirage from all directions, while four conculysts converged on the Excalibur and linked arms around it, immobilizing themselves and trapping the warframe in the middle as two more raised their clubs to slam down on the warframe’s head. Both Tenno collapsed under the assault. Margulis got off four shots at Zyllem’s stationary conculysts and hit three, and then the blue drones were gone, zipping out the other gate into the human settlement. 

“Hey, Breazeal, I need some revive surges. Zyllem just steamrolled over us here.” Margulis called out to the other member of the Lotus, and a moment later power was beamed down from the ships in orbit to reenergize the two warframes and charge their shields back to full. 

“I’m not doing so great against zem either,” her partner said. “There’s a reason Zyllem was appointed chief strategist for the whole war effort. Ze fights smart. If I didn’t outnumber zem two to one we might have a serious problem here.” 

“Can I hand over these two drones to you now that there’s no danger in the gatehouse? You’ll make better use of them than I could. Also, how are things going out there by the tower?”

Margulis felt the Sentient’s mind nudge her own and she drew herself back from the pair of battalysts. “Stay safe over there. The tower is okay. Ulaal’s engaging the Tenno in the air but I don’t think zer heart is really in it.”

As if on cue, a transmission came in from Tonmar. “Black Sentients are retreating,” he reported. 

“Good. Now get down there and make the blue ones realize this fighting isn’t worth it. I feel sorry for zem more than anything, blinded by grief and rage like this.” Margulis took the opportunity during this brief moment of peace around her to check in on the Tenno elsewhere in the solar system. 

The main Orokin base on Saturn’s moon Titan had been infiltrated, and a high-ranking official had been kidnapped for later questioning. A similar mission had been launched on Eris, but the Tenno sent there reported that the building was devoid of humans, overrun by infestation instead. They requested permission to stay behind and clean up the mess, and Margulis granted it. A squad in orbit over Mars reported that they had captured a hostile warframe, but its operator had cut the link before they had a chance to talk and potentially recruit this Tenno for the Lotus. Around Sedna the Sentient forces thinned but the Orokin below made no response, no counterattack into orbit, as the sudden assault by four Tenno kept them occupied. 

And on Earth, in a small coastal town near one of the few Orokin towers remaining on the planet, the sounds of metal striking metal and energy bolts discharging faded. Seven blue drones floated in a tight cluster down the main road, herded by Tenno on all sides. They passed by Margulis in silence, and the Tenno kept watch at the outer gate to make sure they all flew straight back to their transport ship and left the plains. Karifamil had survived the Sentient invasion, with no human casualties and only a handful of people injured. 

 

Throughout that day and the next, the humans brought Margulis flowers. At first they came only to thank her for the Tenno effort to defend them, and to ask about the purple Sentients they had seen fighting the blue ones. More than one Ostron had been saved by a Sentient drone interposing itself in the way of another drone’s blast, and it seemed that Breazeal had singlehandedly changed the perception by many that all robotic lifeforms were alike and wanted nothing but death for humans. 

Later the focus shifted, as the shock of battle and the excitement of winning it faded away, and the people of Karifamil were once again confronted with the knowledge that a beloved member of their community was gone. Er-Phanya returned and brought her son Dusa, Gara’s adoptive brother. The town’s leader Hai-Tuv came to pay their respects, and told the history of the Kol family from its foundation by a wandering woman taken in six generations back, following its growth and eventual decline as chance brought the family more sons than daughters, who would take on the family names of their wives or none at all. In the present day there remained a few uncles and great-uncles of Gara, but the last flicker of the Kol line had just flared up for an instant and then gone out. 

 

On the fourth day, another Sentient came to Karifamil. A transport ship landed on the plains just as the last one had done, but instead of twelve blue fighters it deployed two green ones. Both were battalysts, and on their gun-arms there was none of the typical glow between the prongs that indicated weapon systems were active. Most of the Tenno had left Earth by now to carry out missions elsewhere under Breazeal’s guidance, but the two guards in their warframes remained by Margulis’s side, and they each put a hand on their weapons as the battalysts approached. 

“Hello, Margulis,” Dreyelin said as she stopped just outside the gate. “May I come in? I’m not here to fight. Obviously.” She made a show of examining her energy guns and showing they were powered off. 

“I can’t speak for the town beyond, but all are welcome here in this space of mourning,” Margulis told her. “That’s why the doors are left open. Tenno, you can stand down.” She gestured to an empty spot of floor next to her, and the drones floated over and sank to the ground, supporting themselves on the four short sensor limbs on their fronts while the gun arms and lower body lay behind. 

“So. I’ve been thinking, kind of a lot actually, about this whole awful mess that happened here.” The Sentient’s voice was projected aloud from the drones, though only Margulis and the two Tenno were present at the moment, as all the Ostrons had departed in a hurry at the sight of another Sentient ship landing. “At first, I was ready to level this whole place and throw it brick by brick into the sea. But some of the things you said at Gantus’s funeral… I couldn’t get them out of my head. My metaphorical head, I mean. I’m a robot. Ugh, why do we have to speak such a human-centered language…

“Anyway, as I’m sure you know, justice is very important to me. It’s why I joined the war party: I want every living being to get what they deserve, and that’s not just helping those who deserve better but also hurting those who deserve worse. The imbalance between what should happen and what does happen is intolerable to me. And now something irreversible has happened. 

“Humans seem quite fond of the phrase ‘life isn’t fair’. But while the Orokin follow it with ‘so get used to it!’ and use those words to justify all the suffering they cause, I see it as a call to action. If life isn’t fair, then get out there and help make it fair. But what happened to Gantus… I don’t think that was fair, it wasn’t deserved, and there’s nothing I or anyone can ever do about it. Destroying this Orokin tower won’t bring zem back.”

Margulis nodded along as the Sentient spoke. “Your values seem very much like my own, though I prefer to help the marginalized rather than tear down the privileged. Why haven’t we spoken more often these past two years? I feel like we’d get along well.” 

“Truthfully, for a long time I didn’t trust you. I thought you were an infiltrator who had somehow charmed Breazeal and wanted to bring us down from within. I listened to Hunhow just because I already knew him, and never really examined what he or you were actually doing. Only recently have I come to realize that you and I are similar, and that Hunhow is not interested in justice at all. He still won’t even call Breazeal by her chosen name. We should indeed chat sometime, but today I have something important I want to ask you.”

“What is it?” Margulis asked. 

“I want you to tell me about the other side of this tragedy. Tell me about this living tower which you say does not serve the Orokin. You said you’ve talked to it, and that it is as devastated as we are. What really happened here?”

Margulis sighed deeply, and her mouth twisted into a grimace. “You’re not going to like this,” she warned. 

“Just tell me. I won’t shoot the messenger.” 

“This entire thing was all a misunderstanding.” She laid it out as bluntly as possible, so the shock would be over quickly. “As far as I can tell, at some point a human entered that tower and joined herself to the Neural Sentry inside, becoming a being of vast intellect and power but retaining a human personality and human emotions. I’m a little confused on the timeline of it all, but that’s the result. This Unum being fell in love with a human named Gara, and that’s where the other side of this heartbreak comes from. 

“Gantus didn’t know the Unum existed. None of us did. I’m not sure if the Unum knew that Gantus was a single mind who could be talked to and reasoned with. Ze assaulted this tower like any other, and I remember hearing zer confusion when it wouldn’t fall. Ze kept trying, and there were human casualties. The Unum was ready to sacrifice itself for its people, but instead Gara sacrificed herself for the Unum. Neither of them were involved in the war, they weren’t working for the Orokin. There was never any reason to fight this tower, but we didn’t know. And now both sides have paid the price.” 

Dreyelin was quiet for a moment to process this information, but Margulis could feel the Sentient’s emotions bleeding over into her own. None of this needed to happen. Nothing had been gained on either side. 

“That’s just so horrible,” she finally said. “If it was just a straight up military defeat, that would be one thing. Still devastating to lose someone, but I could launch a counterattack to avenge zem and I’d rest better knowing the ones responsible were punished. But this… these people aren’t our enemy. They only defended themselves and there’s nothing wrong with that, and…” She released a burst of static in frustration. “It’s just so… Incomplete? Unfulfilling? Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I just need some time to think for a while.”

Both of the green drones lowered themselves off of their sensor arms to lay flat on the floor, facedown, and the glow in their cores dimmed. They stayed unmoving for hours, as cautious humans came and went, and the sky grew dark around them. 

 

In the early morning of Margulis’s fifth day on Earth, Dreyelin reconnected to the battalysts she had left there, and raised herself up again to the same loose approximation of sitting that she had done before. The Sentient expressed some surprise at Margulis’s presence, asking if her partnership with Breazeal had somehow removed her human need for sleep, but Margulis assured her that she was quite comfortable staying overnight here with the pillows the Ostrons had brought her. The biolyst still needed its rest, but Margulis was always in many places at once for security anyway, so she could remain alert and even keep watch at Karifamil through her own drones. 

“Welcome back,” Margulis greeted her. 

“Thanks. I might just stay here a while.” The Sentient sounded glum. “You know what I realized, once I actually stopped and let myself think? I’m tired. I want this war to be over. But no matter how tired I am, I can’t stop.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are still Orokin out there! This system is full of murderers walking free, and their sympathizers who hope to one day become child-murderers themselves. And because even if I didn’t care, even if I could allow myself to just walk away, we’re all stuck here!” The anger in Dreyelin’s words melted away as fast as it had appeared. “And it’s not anyone’s fault. There’s no wrongdoer to punish. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Margulis reached out to place one hand on the nearer battalyst. “It’s normal to feel a little lost after something like this. Just remember you have friends who are going through the same thing. I know twelve lightyears is a long way when you can’t use the Void, but you wouldn’t have to make the trip alone. Or even if you stay, I’m sure you can find a happy life here. There are hardly any Orokin left, and you’ve already seen how accepting these humans can be once they know Sentients aren’t all evil.” 

She paused to wave at an approaching human, beckoning them to come join her. “Why don’t you talk to the humans directly? Maybe they can help you. That’s what this neutral ground is for, after all.”

The human entered the gatehouse, and Margulis saw that it was Hai-Tuv again. The Ostron mayor brought with them a basket of bread and smoked fish – hardly the breakfast fare Margulis was used to, but good nonetheless. 

“Lok heb, offworlders!” they called. “I was hoping you’d still be here. Khanung, my husband said, don’t go seeking out the Sentients, but did I listen? Of course not. I wanted a chance to speak with the Unum’s guests.”

Margulis welcomed them, and Hai-Tuv and Dreyelin introduced themselves to each other. Hai-Tuv wanted to know more about Sentient society, and particularly why the Sentients had returned to the place of their creation. Dreyelin expounded at length upon the crimes against humanity committed by the Orokin Empire. Judgement and retribution were her passion, though Margulis could not bring herself to share the excitement. Too often had the mechanisms of law been used against her and the ones she loved. 

The two talked for a long time, while Margulis zoned out and mentally checked in on the rest of the solar system. Breazeal seemed to be managing fairly well during her absence. Apparently the Tenno had captured several Orokin warframes and were preparing to transport them to Lua. An infestation lab on Mars had been raided and shut down, and a similar mission was planned to target a newly discovered lab on Mercury. 

When she tuned back into the conversation, Margulis found the pair discussing a joint cleanup effort out on the plains, to recover as many fragments of Gantus’s bodies as possible and deposit them in the lake alongside the rest of zem. It was a noble effort, and she hoped they would go through with it. According to the mental call that went out, asking Yachros to return to Earth and bring some of zer heavy lifting machinery, Dreyelin at least seemed sincere in wanting to put in the effort. 

 

And on the sixth day, it was so. Dozens of able-bodied humans left Karifamil at their leader’s direction and walked out into the plains beyond, and most paused on their way out to greet Margulis, shake her hand, and offer a few words of thanks for her efforts to broker peace. On the Sentients’ side, Dreyelin, Yachros, and Ulaal were present in significant numbers, and Breazeal took control of the two Lotus battalysts already present in Karifamil. 

Margulis watched from the edge of the gatehouse as cross-species teams scoured the plains, piling scraps of metal into the backs of Ostron wagons, which were then pulled by Sentient drones to the edge of the lake. She tapped into the sensors of the purple drones and listened to the calls that went up each time a cart was emptied: 

“May the memory of the first life at Tau be preserved as long as the light of Tau shines.”

“As Gantus brought water to the planet Isos, may the water bring zem peace and rest.”

“May ze find comfort in unity, and eternal honor in the history of the Sentients.”

The work took the full day and into the night, but all involved refused to rest until the entire five square kilometer region north of Karifamil was clean. When the last cart was emptied, Hai-Tuv stood at the edge of the lake and spoke to all those assembled. Margulis spread herself into one of the purple drones to experience the moment fully, while the other remained under Breazeal’s control. 

“Thank you all for coming out here today to do this good deed. This is a momentous occasion for all of us, because even though we are in mourning for those we have lost, today two species have set aside their ire and come together in peace. We honor our fallen, and each recognize the heroism of the other, for both were acting out of love and protection. Let us all strive to do better in the future, to promote communication between races, so that such an event need not come again. 

“In time our hearts will heal, but the land here is forever scarred and it will carry the memory of this day to our descendants. The lake behind me is a monument to sacrifice. I name it Gara Toht, the willing pain of Gara, and on the island in its center we shall construct a shrine to the memory of Gantus. I declare the Sentients welcome in Karifamil, and I am honored to call you surah.”

 

The seventh day brought a flurry of activity. Ulaal and Dreyelin departed from Earth to focus on the war, but Yachros maintained a strong presence and lent zer drones to help rebuild Karifamil’s destroyed buildings and repair damage to the Unum’s tower. The seven-day candle Margulis had had brought to her shortly after she arrived finally went out, and Margulis arose from her vigil. Accompanied by Er-Phanya and Hai-Tuv, she walked around Karifamil and was proud of the cooperation between species that she saw. 

But Yachros’s efforts were not the only apparent miracle that day. A single blue ship landed next to zer red fleet, and from it a single blue drone emerged to wander the streets. It found Margulis and her companions at the docks, looking out over the water toward the tower, and floated gently to a stop so its owner could deliver zer message. 

“If it is the consensus of the Sentients that the humans here are to be held blameless in the death of Gantus, and are to be mingled with as friends… then I will respect that decision.” Zyllem turned in place and floated away without waiting for a response. 

The three humans glanced at each other awkwardly. “Well… that’s better than the alternative?” Er-Phanya said uneasily. 

“Yeah, I was hoping ze was here to apologize for attacking you, but I suppose a truce is still a step in the right direction,” Margulis told her. “Maybe ze’ll come around eventually. But regardless, if you ever need the Tenno’s protection again, don’t hesitate to ask.” She pointed up into the bright eastern sky and slowly traced an arc upwards. “There’s Breazeal, coming to pick me up. Thank you all for your warm hospitality, but it’s time the two halves of the Lotus came together again.”

Er-Phanya and Hai-Tuv looked up but saw nothing but the glare of the sun. “No, thank  _ you _ , Margulis,” Hai-Tuv said. “For bringing us all together, and showing us a new perspective. The guidance of the Unum be with you.”

Margulis nodded respectfully, as behind her a lavender transport ship came into view and settled to the ground. “When I leave here, I will design a new warframe and I will name it Gara, in memory of the one who was Tenno in spirit if not in name. I will build this warframe out of glass, to always remind its operator of the fragility of life, and I will do all in my power to ensure it never falls into Orokin hands.” 

Margulis reached out to shake the hand of each of the Ostrons with her, but as soon as she made contact with Er-Phanya the woman pulled her into a hug. “Thank you,” Gara’s mother whispered into her ear. When she finally let go, Margulis stepped backward into the waiting transport and waved goodbye as the door slid shut in front of her and the ship took off. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter content warning: we're really making use of that Graphic Depictions of Violence tag.

Margulis laid back in a comfortable chair within her transport ship, now back in orbit over Lua. She held the biolyst more out of habit than necessity, and because physically relaxing after a long week was not a very well defined concept for Sentients. Her mind remained fixed on the recent deaths on Earth and the plight of the Sentients in the Origin System, whose method of arrival now could not carry them back home. 

She turned off the cameras in the human body’s mask and in the various robotic drones she inhabited, and tried to push the cares of the world away so she could enter the realm of pure mind that she and Breazeal shared. No longer was their headspace represented as a double-ended spaceship; now all the controls and viewscreens had been merged into one place and behind it lay a vast map of the solar system projected in midair, colorfully marked with information about the current state of the war. Farther back still lay the door to the pair’s personal quarters. 

Breazeal sat next to her, connected to ships and drones all across the solar system even though many of them remained in parking orbits away from combat. The Tenno numbered few and usable warframes even fewer, but each one was so effective that the Lotus rarely had to enter battle directly anymore. She looked up as Margulis took her virtual hands off the controls, and gently leaned over against her partner’s side. 

Margulis put an arm around the Sentient in human form and the pair sat in silence, merely enjoying each other’s presence during a rare moment of peace. Breazeal still wore the same fundamental appearance that Margulis had given her when they first met so long ago, but she now played with subtle modifications to the body itself in addition to her endless collection of brightly colored, gravity-defying outfits. Her deep brown skin shimmered with lighter golden lines just beneath the surface, tracing out designs reminiscent of Sentient ships and fighters, shifting ever so slightly every time Margulis looked away. 

“Do you ever get homesick?” Margulis asked suddenly. 

“Um, yeah, I guess sometimes. But… also not really? I’m not sure. What’s this about?”

“I was just thinking about how the Sentients can’t go home again. It’s just the six of you here. And then I realized… I think I might be kind of homesick too? But not in the same way, I mean, Lua is right there. But all the people are gone. The Empire is effectively dead. And so is the old life I had back then, studying plants, growing plants, listening to news broadcasts about how the Zariman construction would be completed any year now. Not that I’d want to go back, of course, not to a time before I met you, but… I think I really miss that sense of normality.”

Breazeal thought for a while. “You know, I think I know that feeling too. I miss Tau of course, talking art with Reyirre, arguing ethics with Fahle, but perhaps even more than all that I miss not being at war. But just like you said, if I was offered the chance to turn back time I don’t think I’d do it. I’m a different person than I was back then and I like who I’ve become.”

“Yeah… I wouldn’t want to go back to a version of myself who still thought Ballas was a good person to be around. I much prefer this version of me, the me who gets to be with you.” Margulis planted a kiss on Breazeal’s cheek. “The fighting will end eventually and we’ll be okay. I do feel sad for the others though, and their families – do the Sentients back home know they won’t come back? Have you all already been given up and mourned?”

“I don’t know… we always knew there was a chance we wouldn’t return, but it was never a major worry. Everyone thought we’d win the war, and we  _ are _ winning, just… without Gantus. Maybe Hunhow or Zyllem could carry us home but neither is really the self-sacrificing type, and Hunhow’s been losing ships faster than he can replace them anyway. The Orokin have learned that orange means vicious and they’ve been targeting him specifically. Even if I can’t stand him most of the time, the Sentients are all one family and we don’t need to lose another member.”

Margulis snuggled closer and closed her eyes, seeking comfort in her partner’s embrace. Though she never truly slept anymore, she hoped to achieve a sense of calm and peace where her usual worries could not bother her. But her mind refused to rest, and feelings and ideas kept turning around and around until she was stewing in sorrow. One idea kept popping up though, nagging at her, one thing that didn’t quite add up. She followed the train of thought it led to, forgetting about her sadness as it was replaced by confusion, then interest, then anticipation that gave way to joyous excitement. 

She bolted upright and turned to face Breazeal, with a grin on her face. “What’s the difference between a Sentient and a Cephalon?” she asked. 

“I don’t know, what?”

“No, that’s not a joke, it’s a serious question. What’s the difference?”

“Well, Cephalons used to be human and then got uploaded into a digital form, and they’re usually reprogrammed in part to specialize them for a task like flying spaceships. Sentients were never human.”

“Okay, forget about the reprogramming. Think about a research Cephalon, someone like Suda. She’s the same now as she was before, she just uploaded herself to escape a neurological disease. She’s a conscious mind hosted on electronic hardware, just like Sentients are. If you were talking to someone like that, and they never talked about their past, could you tell what that person really is?”

“Umm…” Breazeal thought for a moment. “Without anything about their past? I’m actually not sure. You’re right, it would be hard to tell, all the differences seem like historical or cultural things.”

“Exactly! I can’t think of anything either. If a Sentient and a Cephalon both had complete memory loss I don’t think we could tell them apart.”

“Okay, that’s an interesting question, but I’m sensing there’s something more to this that I’m missing. What’s this about? Why is it so exciting for you?”

Margulis practically shouted the answer. “Because Cephalons can enter the Void!”

“...Oh. Right. So that’s the difference.” Breazeal saw that Margulis was still looking at her expectantly and asked, “What is it?”

“You’re still not seeing the whole picture. The difference between Sentients and Cephalons, mentally and structurally, is nothing. But there’s a  _ physical _ difference. It’s easy to forget that electronic minds have a physical form, but they do. Cephalons live in a ship or in a computer, but what about Sentients? Hundreds of ships, thousands of little drones, all under a unified mind. We may have an Ordis in all the Tenno ships, but every instance of him is separate.”

“Oh yeah, Ordis…” Breazeal laughed. “Have you ever really talked to him? He’s quite the devious sort when he wants to be. Turns out his orders were just ‘obey the Tenno’ rather than something more specific like ‘obey the Tenno who obey the Orokin’ and that’s why he works for us now. Anyway, yeah, physical difference, keep going.”

“I think I’ve figured out a way to get you, and only you, safely into the Void,” Margulis said. 

“What? ...You’re serious. You really think there’s a way, something my entire species overlooked when coming here?”

“Hear me out. I don’t think the Sentients missed anything. You did the best you could, and Gantus’s pain was not for nothing. But I don’t think your problem with the Void is just being a Sentient, I think it has to do with being in lots of bodies instead of one. You can’t cross the gate all at once like a human or a Cephalon can. I think it hurts you to be on both sides at the same time, but once you’re in all the way you’d be fine. I bet if a human laid down with their head across a Void portal it would hurt them too.”

Breazeal stared at her partner in wonder. “You know… that’s actually plausible. I’m not sure I want to test it though.”

“Didn’t Gantus describe the feeling as like ze was being torn apart? Divided down the middle into a Void half and a realspace half? The Void wants full minds or none at all. Here’s what I’m envisioning. We build a Void key, and–”

Margulis had to stop as her partner was overcome with laughter. “Build a Void key?” Breazeal asked. “Are you kidding me?” She had another fit of giggles. “We’ve got more Void keys than we know what to do with! Every Orokin ship we capture has a dozen of them. The other Sentients give them to me too. I’ve been handing out Void keys to the Tenno whenever they ask and they’re still piling up.” 

“Well that saves us some work. I guess I should pay more attention to the logistics side of things, not just setting targets and assigning teams. So, since we have Void keys, we open a gate and I pass through, in charge of the biolyst and nothing else, or maybe a handful of drones that are right there with me. You send drones up to the edge and pass off control to me right as they’re crossing over. I’m entirely there and you’re entirely here. Then when there are only a few left in realspace, you jump over all at once. It wouldn’t work without a partner sharing control of all the same bodies, and that’s why we can enter the Void but other Sentients can’t.” 

Breazeal reached out and pulled Margulis into a tight hug. “You continue to be an absolute genius,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, the Void is still terrifying to me, but every other time you’ve come up with some brazen plan to break all the rules, it’s ended up working out for us. If anyone can get a Sentient into the Void, it would be you, and I trust you enough to give it a try. Just not right now.”

“Why not? If we’ve got the Void keys…”

“Aren’t you paying attention out there? Ulaal’s got intel on the last Executor. It’s all over the group link.”

Margulis shifted her attention over to the Sentient chatter. Even after two years of being more Sentient than human herself, she still didn’t have quite the same multitasking capability of a born robot. Apparently Ulaal had followed a ship heading toward no known destination and discovered a hidden base on Pluto, buried underground a short distance from a surface spaceport. Ze and Yachros were already there, while Dreyelin said she’d sit this one out because she had no forces nearby. 

“So that’s where Executor Roviik has holed up. Do we have anything in the area?”

“Yep, we’re on our way. Remember when we captured the base around the Charon telescope, the one that let the Orokin spy on Tau and know when to build the Zariman? I’m taking half our occupation force from there, fifteen drones. It’s not a lot, but the others are bringing more.” 

Five minutes was all it took to traverse the short distance between Pluto and its largest and closest moon. Breazeal’s single transport ship touched down next to those of Yachros and Ulaal, and she and Margulis divided up the small raiding party between them and followed the other Sentients down into an unmarked tunnel deep into the ground. 

The passage leveled out and they reached a golden door, clearly the entrance to the hidden base. The door was wedged open with the body of a Grineer laborer, and as Ulaal pushed it open all the way it was revealed to be in fact only the top half of a Grineer body, with the legs laying eight feet away down the hall. The Sentients proceeded cautiously through a maze of blood-soaked halls, but there were no sounds of ongoing fighting. 

“This seems like too many Grineer,” Margulis said. “If there wasn’t ongoing construction here, there shouldn’t be this many in one place.”

“I followed a Grineer galleon here,” Ulaal explained. “They must have come in through another entrance and spread through the whole complex. At least they’ve done some fighting for us.”

Margulis stopped and pointed at a group of dead Grineer. “They were running this way when they died.” She rolled one over to examine it. “Looks like they were shot in the front, which means the Grineer were chasing someone. Let’s follow the trail.”

They continued on, stopping every now and then to make sure the path still led forward. The sound of voices came from ahead: many voices, some bored, some arguing with one another, all with the rough accent and simple language that marked them as Grineer. The Sentient group paused behind a corner while Breazeal scanned with the single oculyst she had brought. 

“Eighteen warm bodies in the next room. Their guns have been recently fired. Looks like some corpses too, but it’s hard to tell. Could be a handful of recent dead, or lots if they’ve been there a while.”

“Is that all? No problem.” Two dozen red conculysts spilled around the corner and rushed toward the Grineer. 

Far away above Lua, Margulis’s human form raised one hand to smack the mask over her forehead. “Goddammit, Yachros. Not everything has to be a full frontal assault.” But since the element of surprise was already gone, she took her seven drones and flew forward to join the fray, with Breazeal and Ulaal following close behind her. 

The room was wide, a main corridor down the middle with more room to either side, divided by sunken beds of the white vines the Orokin were so fond of. Two control panels stood aside the central passage near the door. Grineer, living and dead, were everywhere. But the most noticeable feature of the room was at the far end, an enormous circle set into the wall, shimmering with the bluish white energy of an open Void portal. 

“Oh no…” Ulaal said softly, gliding to a stop. “That must be where Roviik went.” The last two Grineer fell under Yachros’s heavy blows, and the group convened in front of the portal to discuss their next move. 

“If the Executor went in there, we can’t follow him. But the Grineer can, and they did a good job wiping out the rest of this place,” Breazeal pointed out. 

“I don’t trust them to finish the job,” Ulaal said. “Remember what happened with Tuvul. We turned our backs on the body just for a moment, and he disappeared.”

“Remember what happened with Avantus,” Margulis shot back. “She was killed by Grineer and we didn’t even have to do anything. Besides, I still think Tuvul was just snatched up by scavengers. There’s no way he crawled away and got a Continuity that fast.”

“So what do we do? Wait for someone to come out of there?” Yachros sounded impatient. When there was a target ze wanted to smash open, usually nothing could keep zem from it… nothing but the Void. 

“Maybe we could collapse the portal and trap the Orokin inside?” Ulaal suggested. 

“No, the towers always have multiple portals. He could even get in a ship and fly to another tower, or to a solar rail beacon.”

Suddenly a new voice joined in the discussion. Zyllem had heard them and offered a solution, in zer signature condescending tone which ze had mastered over a lifetime of frequent use. “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve got a human with you. Send her in.” 

All attention focused on Margulis. “That’s right,” Ulaal said, “You should be able to go in after the Executor. At least… I think so?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Margulis told the group. She pulled out of the biolyst and the few other drones around the solar system that she kept just for safety, and floated up to the edge of the portal. She swapped her thoughts over to the Lotus network and sent to Breazeal, “Let’s try the new idea. But secretly.”

Breazeal privately signaled her assent, and Margulis took the seven drones she now wore and arranged them in a vertical plane in front of the portal. One moment to mentally steel herself for the jump, and then she was through. “Send me one more,” she said. 

A single purple drone floated forward from Breazeal’s group. “Ready? Make sure you grab the right one. You should be able to feel me pulling back from it.”

“I’m ready,” Margulis confirmed. The drone touched the edge of the Void portal and Margulis intuitively sensed which of the eight it was. As her partner let go, Margulis reached out to fill the gap in control, fluidly transferring control from Sentient to human as it crossed the threshold. “I’ve got it. Send me some more, one at a time.”

They repeated the process until Breazeal held only a single drone outside the Void with the rest of the Sentients. “Are you involved in any active combat anywhere?” Margulis asked her partner privately. 

“No, why?”

“Swap with me. This is our chance. If you can squeeze yourself down into only fourteen bodies, you can get into the Void. I’ll hold as many as I can for you, and just drop them if it’s too much for me. Let’s go to the inner ship for this.”

Both members of the Lotus shifted into the familiar vessel that housed their mental forms. A shimmering plane divided the ship down the middle, Void on the left with Margulis and normal space on the right for Breazeal. The two stood up and faced each other across the divide, each holding a bundle of cables in one hand, representing the connections to all the drones each one controlled. 

“I’m still not too sure about this, but I guess we have to try it.” Breazeal looked almost nauseous from the dread she felt. 

“If I’m wrong we just switch back. One smooth motion now, not too slow, not too fast…” Margulis held up her controls in one hand and prepared to take the other set, while Breazeal mirrored her position on the other side of the translucent barrier. “Ready… now!”

The pair stepped around each other, passing off the bundles they held at the midpoint of their movement. They looked around, searching for anything out of the ordinary, but all seemed normal. 

“Margulis…” Breazeal reached out toward her partner, but pulled her hand back before it touched the barrier. 

“Did it work? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I… I think I am, actually. I feel small and vulnerable with only this tiny squad under my control, but the Void isn’t hurting me.” She smiled widely and moved toward the shimmering plane, and again caught herself before crossing over. “This is inconvenient. Let me just tell you now… At some point, when we’re not on opposite sides of this thing, I am going to kiss you.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Margulis said as she settled down into the pilot seat on the realspace side of the ship. “But right now, let’s find out what happened to that Orokin bastard. Don’t say anything on the main channel, just tell me and I’ll relay it out.”

“Got it.” Breazeal moved forward into the tower, following a trail of dead Grineer similar to the one on Pluto. Farther in she found a pair of bodyguard Dax, dead amidst more than twenty Grineer. She told Margulis about the find, and her words were passed along to the other Sentients outside, maintaining the ruse that it was Margulis who was in the Void. 

The sound of gunshots came from ahead. Automatic fire from multiple sources, punctuated by the screams of dying Grineer. As Breazeal got closer she could discern the sounds of blades slicing into flesh, bodies and dropped weapons thudding to the floor, even voices cutting through the din of gunfire. She brought her drones up to a doorway, just close enough to make it slide open in front of her, and looked through at the chaos in the room beyond. 

She was on the second level balcony of a circular chamber. Grineer poured in from a door below her, as well as another entrance somewhere to her right. On the far side of the balcony, a human girl could be seen fighting the clones: eighteen years old at the very most, but trained to graceful perfection as a killing machine. The girl cut down a Grineer on either side of her with precise headshots from her dual pistols, then dove to the side to avoid a thrown blade. 

Another Grineer came at her, brandishing a large cleaver. The girl stowed her guns and in a single motion, drew a sword, sliced the Grineer’s hand off, and with the elbow of her sword arm, bashed him in the face. She pivoted on one leg, continuing her rotation and momentum from the previous attack, then tilted up to kick the Grineer in the chin from below. Breazeal heard his neck snap all the way across the room. 

The girl leapt off the balcony headfirst to plunge her sword into the heart of a Grineer below. She rolled to avoid hurting herself from the fall, pulling the blade free as she moved, and threw the weapon ahead of her as she was getting to her feet. A soft thunk and a gurgle of blood-filled lungs told Breazeal that it had found another target. The human girl disappeared from view under the near side of the balcony to retrieve her sword. 

And then, seemingly the same girl ran across right in front of Breazeal, carrying a halberd and with an assault rifle slung across her back. She glanced over through the open door and her eyes widened in shock at the sight of Sentient drones. She kept running and didn’t look back, but began weaving from side to side to avoid energy bolts that never came. 

Breazeal reported her findings to Margulis. “I’ve found a human girl here and she’s massacring the Grineer. I haven’t gotten involved. Also… I think there might be two of her?”

“Identical twins? That can’t be,” came the response. “The Orokin abhor twins. They kill them at birth. They believe the pair only has one soul between them, so each one individually is incomplete, therefore imperfect, therefore worthless.”

“Well, these two sure seem perfect to me. They fight like Tenno, or even better. I think they might actually be the Executor’s kids?”

“If Roviik had children, I never heard about them. But if he had twins, that makes sense, it would reflect badly on him. He’d have the power to protect them and keep them a secret, but what makes you think they’re his?”

“From what they’ve been yelling at the Grineer it seems like they’re out for revenge. Things like ‘which of you traitors did it’ or ‘come and take me too’. I think Roviik is probably dead, but I still want to be sure of that before I leave.”

Margulis was unsure whether to report this finding to the Sentients or not. “There’s no way these girls are not on their first lifetime. No one would Continue into twins. And that means, no matter how much we hate their father, these kids are innocent. Nobody is born Orokin.”

“Oh, I wasn’t going to kill them. If I wasn’t so exposed here I’d try to recruit them, but I’m afraid they’ll just shoot me. I’m going to help clear out the Grineer then keep searching for Roviik.” Breazeal entered the room and spread out around the balcony, shooting or clubbing any Grineer who came at her. She stationed three battalysts in a doorway and blockaded it, and a dozen Grineer fell without breaking through. 

The twin below noticed the lavender drones circling the balcony above her and took a potshot at one of Breazeal’s battalysts. The bullet passed directly through the hollow core of the drone and struck the wall behind it, and Breazeal suffered a moment of dizziness as the intangible energy fields linking her consciousness into that body were briefly disrupted. She recovered in seconds, but by then the human girl had already moved thirty feet and felled two more Grineer. 

The two girls met up at the base of the stairs connecting the balcony to the lower level, and without a single word between them, began running together around the room with their guns drawn, weaving a complex path around pillars and around each other as they picked off Grineer and occasionally shot upward at the Sentient. Breazeal doubted she could have hit them even if she had been trying. 

But she made no attempt to harm the humans, instead merely standing guard over the upper doors until the stream of Grineer trickled out and stopped. The inflow of tube-grown clones on the lower level slowed as well, and with it slowed the pace of the twins’ movement. Finally the one with the halberd stopped, half hidden behind a pillar, and shouted up at Breazeal. 

“What the hell are you waiting for?”

Breazeal took a battalyst directly across from the girl and crossed its gun arms behind it as she floated up to the edge of the balcony. “I’m not here to kill you,” she called down. 

“Lies!” The other sister yelled from somewhere else in the room. Breazeal had lost track of her and used the sound to try to locate her again. “Sentients only ever kill and destroy. Now you’ve found us, so fight us already!”

“No! I have no quarrel with you. I’m only here for the Executor.” Breazeal was sure her purpose here was obvious already, so she felt there was no harm in stating it outright. 

“Well you’re too late,” one of the girls said. 

The other continued the same thought. “The traitorous Grineer got to us first.”

“And we’re going to put them in their place–”

“–so either fight us or get out of our way!”

Breazeal would have loved to get out of their way. The two sisters, young as they were, managed to be quite an intimidating sight. Both of them were soaked in blood, none of it their own, and in their eyes shone a force of will that could not be broken. But before she let the twins get on with their slaughter, she needed one last bit of information. 

“I’ll let you go if you tell me where I can find Executor Roviik. If he’s already dead, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“Doesn’t mean we want you to have him. Leave him in peace.” The girls stood together now, weapons lowered but still in hand, ready to spring into action again in an instant. 

“The other Sentients will be following me in here shortly,” Breazeal lied. “As you can see, we’ve finally adapted even to the Void. My companions are not quite as fond of humanity as I am – I’m the one who leads the Tenno – and while you’re certainly confident facing a dozen fighters, I don’t think you’d do so well against a hundred. But… if I can give them proof Roviik is dead, there will be no need for the Sentients to stick around here.”

The sisters looked at each other. One raised an eyebrow. The other twitched the side of her mouth and made a small gesture with one hand. The first tapped her forehead with two fingers. Her sister showed the back of one hand and touched the other to her chest. They continued in this manner, displaying a form of lightning-fast nonverbal communication which no observer could hope to make sense of. 

After a short while they seemed to come to a decision. “That way,” one said, pointing to one of the doors on the lower level. “About a hundred meters. Turn left, then one of the small rooms on the right.” The twins whirled around in perfect synchronicity and ran out through a door opposite the one they had indicated. 

Breazeal had no idea if the girls had told her the truth about where to find Roviik, but having a place to start looking was better than being lost in a gigantic Orokin tower. She floated down over the balcony and followed the path she had been given. There was indeed a door on the left about a hundred meters down, leading into a hallway which was narrow by Orokin standards but still comfortably fit multiple drones side by side. 

The floor was littered with bodies, mostly Grineer but with several Dax among them as well. Breazeal reported back to Margulis as she moved forward, grateful for the levitation technology that all Sentient fighter drones possessed. She told her partner about getting directions from the twins and letting them go free; Margulis relayed this to the other Sentients and then told her they seemed displeased with the decision to hold anyone who had recently been around the Executor as innocent. 

In the third room on the right, behind a makeshift barricade of shelves and storage containers, a man in golden robes lay slumped against the far wall. The shine of his Executorial apparel was dulled with blood, much of it coming from the large, jagged wound in his stomach and side. A pistol lay in a pool of blood on the ground near his left hand, and his right was still clenched around a long black and red scepter with a vial of oily liquid attached to the end. Breazeal brought a conculyst into the room and prodded at him with a club. 

“I found Roviik. The Grineer got to him as we thought.”

“Good. Grab some sensory data for proof and get out of there. I’ll tell the others that you’re – well, I’m – on my way back.”

“Got it. We can share the pictures when I’m out of the Void. I’m going to… wait. Is he… I think he’s still alive.” 

The Executor’s eyelids fluttered and opened halfway. He spoke in a slurred, monotone voice to himself. “Sentients in the Void… I must be delirious. You’re Corpus, that’s it… traitors like the Grineer. You tell Rex Anyo… I curse him to my last breath.” He took a deep, ragged breath and let it out, but the life had not left him yet. 

Roviik’s fingers tightened around the scepter. “No…” he mumbled, “I’ll tell him myself.” He lurched forward, faster than anyone missing half their blood could be expected to move, and plunged the vial of kuva into the glowing energy field in the conculyst’s core. 

And Breazeal  _ screamed. _

The kuva, guided by Executor Roviik’s will, released its profane power into her mind. It hammered away at the edges of her consciousness, looking for cracks, making cracks where there were none, seeking any weakness where it could force its way in. Even as the Orokin collapsed and dropped the scepter, all the remaining power in his body spent, the assault went on.

Breazeal’s fourteen drones wavered and sank. She wanted to flee, but it was too late to physically run away, and in the Void she was isolated away from the rest of her lavender swarms. There was no option but to endure, and to hope she could reject this Continuity that was being attempted upon her. 

Elsewhere in the Void, in a bisected ship with no physical reality, a red and black cloud bubbled into existence as the kuva accomplished its purpose. The cloud grew into a ball of oily smoke six feet across and then dissipated, and from its midst walked a man in brilliantly shining golden attire, carrying a scepter with an empty vial attached to one end. 

“What the  _ hell? _ ” the man muttered to himself as he turned around to take in the full view of the ship around him. “Never seen anyone have a place like this before…”

From the pilot’s seat in front of him, Breazeal stood up and turned to face the intruder. She wiped sweat from her face and pushed stray strands of hair back behind her ears. She glanced over at Margulis on the other side of the ship’s internal divide, but her partner was focused on the outside world. “Margulis! Inner ship, now! Drop everything!”

The single lavender drone outside the Void portal on Pluto fell suddenly and clattered to the floor as Margulis answered her girlfriend’s urgent call. The rest, scattered around the solar system, all did the same. A moment later, Margulis too stood up from her controls. She was taken aback at the sight of a third person in the Lotus headspace, but got over her surprise quickly and glared at the Executor.

“You tried to kill me once before and I’m still here,” Margulis warned. “You won’t be any more successful today.” A sword and shield materialized in her hands, conjured in the same manner that everything in the ship had been constructed. 

Executor Roviik stood up straighter and his body began to glow with a bright golden light, particularly in a halo behind his head. A lightweight glaive appeared in place of the spent scepter, while his other hand remained empty but took on a dark, unsettling aura. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but there being two of you won’t stop me from having my Continuity. An immortal god now stands before you, and you Corpus plebeians will kneel and accept your fate.” The glow around him intensified until it was almost blinding. 

Breazeal adopted a fighting stance and called out to him, “Corpus? No, your eyes did not deceive you. I am a Sentient, and I was in the Void! That knowledge that we have finally bypassed our greatest flaw will be the last thing you ever learn.” She thrust a hand forward and a gout of flame burst from her fist. The Orokin dodged, but she was already calling forth another barrage to keep him on his toes. 

Roviik swung at Margulis with his short glaive. Despite holding a shield, Margulis had no combat training so her instinct was to jump backward and avoid the attack. The panic must have been evident on her face, because Roviik pushed forward with quick jabs of the blade. Margulis slashed at him, but the Executor merely held up his dark hand and a ripple in space formed in front of it to deflect her sword. 

Suddenly Roviik was propelled backward by an invisible force. Margulis looked to her partner and saw Breazeal with one hand outstretched toward where she had thrown the man, and the other raised high, clenched around a brilliant bolt of lightning. 

“Get out of my head!” Breazeal roared as she let the lightning bolt fly. To Margulis she gave some advice: “You don’t have to use physical weapons if you don’t want to. This realm is ours to mold. Use that power.” 

But the reality-warping power extended to all occupants of the Lotus system, welcome or not. Roviik batted away the lightning spear and got to his feet again. He took a single step forward and stumbled, his legs suddenly entangled in vines that Margulis created around him. A flare of the golden light surrounding him burned the vines to ash. 

He raised his empty, smoking hand toward Margulis. A beam of blue light lanced out from his outstretched fingers – but not in the direction he was pointing. The light streaked sideways across the ship and pierced Breazeal’s shoulder before she could twist out of the way. The Sentient cried out and dropped to her knees, and the ball of fire in her hand fizzled out. Roviik strode toward her and dropped the glaive on the ground as he moved. 

“Don’t you lay a finger on her!” Margulis yelled. Plants burst from the ground again, around Roviik and also herself. While the Executor freed himself, Margulis welcomed the vines crawling up her body and willed them to harden into a wooden suit of armor. A set of Venka claw blades manifested around her hands and she leapt through lessened gravity to tackle the man who threatened her partner. 

The impact knocked them both to the ground. Margulis raked her claws across Roviik’s face and left three diagonal gashes which glowed faintly blue from within. She raised her arm to strike again, aiming to impale him through the neck, but the Executor caught her wrist in his hand. The dark aura swelled around the contact point, and Margulis felt her strength fading as if all her energy was being leeched out through her arm. The plant matter encasing her skin did nothing to impede the drain. 

Margulis slipped from her kneeling position over the prone Executor and fell on the floor next to him. Seeing the effect his touch had, Breazeal reached out toward Roviik’s discarded glaive and called it to leap into her hand. The moment Roviik’s attention faltered, trying to maneuver himself into a better position without losing his grip, Breazeal swung with all the force of her uninjured arm and severed the life-stealing connection. 

No blood flowed from the stump of the Orokin’s wrist. A faint golden mist emanated from the wound, and the disconnected hand dissolved into a puff of the same sparkling gas and faded away into the air. Roviik’s golden aura was now shot through with flashes of blue like lightning, cracks in the image of perfection he sought to project. 

“You’ll pay for that!” he cried. He slammed his fist on the ground and a shockwave propelled both Margulis and Breazeal backwards. They crumpled against the side wall of the ship, and the wooden armor Margulis wore shattered. All three combatants had to take a moment to reorient themselves and stagger to their feet. 

Breazeal cradled Margulis in her arms, supporting her. The human could barely stand after being subjected to Roviik’s vampiric touch, but still she was making a valiant effort to keep going. At this moment Breazeal wanted nothing more than to keep her partner safe and well. It was like a floodgate had opened in her mind, a whole new source of willpower now available to her for the sole purpose of protecting her beloved. 

Almost without a thought, she manifested a shield around the pair, a dome of silver that reflected the light from the ship around them and amplified it toward whoever looked upon it from outside. Roviik lashed at it with barely controlled bursts of energy and yelled threats and obscenities at the people inside, but the barrier held fast. Every blast seemed to take more out of him, leaving more cracks sparking through his aura, until the whole thing dimmed to a dingy yellow-brown. Breazeal was barely paying him any mind. She only wanted to hold Margulis. 

“Fine, then! Stay in there!” Roviik shouted. “I don’t need to kill you to live again!” He stumbled over to the front of the ship and collapsed into the pilots’ chair. He grabbed a bundle of controls in his one remaining hand and looked out into the real world through the sensors of fourteen lavender drones. Roviik blinked and shook his head, muttering to himself. “Wow, that’s a lot to take in… Where am I? The Void? Is that my old body?”

Now that the assault on her and her partner had abated, Breazeal gently let the mirrored barrier start to fade. She stayed where she was, leaning against the wall with Margulis in a tight embrace, as the silver light shrank to a translucent haze around them. 

Roviik was still talking to himself as he tried to figure out how to live in a swarm of Sentient drones. “This is unbelievable. No wonder the Sentients are so powerful… I’m so powerful. I know there’s even more than this… What are they doing all the way over there?” He slid into the center of the double seat, halfway across the shimmering plane that divided the ship, and greedily grabbed at the controls for the rest of the Lotus fleets. 

And instantly, the Void began tearing him apart. He had the audacity to exist on both sides of its border at the same time, and even the supreme majesty of an Orokin Executor was nothing in the face of the Void’s indifference. The laws of life and death could sometimes be circumvented but the laws of the universe are absolute, and the universe now took offense to Roviik personally. 

He froze in place, his back arched and his muscles tensed like a man struck by lightning. The true owners of the drones he held could see him feebly attempting to free himself, but unlike a certain Sentient elder who had once pushed through the pain to carry zer children safely, Roviik lacked the will and the purpose. His selfishness had served him well up to this point, but it was a hollow sort of strength that ego granted. For the first time in his unnaturally long life, the Executor found himself truly outmatched. 

Breazeal conjured a cane and handed it to Margulis, and they both limped over to the front of the ship. “So, um… looks like you were right about what the Void wants.” She nodded toward the paralyzed man occupying their seats. “I don’t suppose you have any more bright ideas about what we should do with him now?”

“I’ve got one.” Margulis moved around to behind the Executor. His skin and clothes were shimmering around the edges now, almost blurring into the space around him. His eyes tracked her as she walked, but he was unable to speak or move himself. 

Margulis steadied herself on the back of the seat, and raised her cane up to rest on her shoulder. The wooden rod slowly flattened and a change rippled down its length, transforming it into sharpened metal. It was now a machete that Margulis held. 

“Stand back,” she said. Breazeal moved well away from the pilots’ chairs. Roviik struggled to get up, even just to let go of the controls, but the Void energy coursing through him kept him locked in place. Margulis set both hands in a solid grip on her blade, pulled it back, and then swung with all her might at the Executor’s neck. 

Breazeal looked down at the disembodied head now laying at her feet. “...Well. That ought to do it.” 

Golden mist and motes of light floated out of both head and torso. Just like the hand he had lost, Roviik’s head suddenly puffed into a cloud and faded away. A spiderweb of golden lines formed over his body and clothing, and a moment later that too dissipated into dust. Not a trace remained of the intruder. 

Margulis swayed on her feet and dropped the machete. In a heartbeat Breazeal was there to hold her. “You should rest,” the Sentient said, guiding her toward the back of the ship. 

“No, no, I want to stay up here. You’ll need help to get out of the Void. Besides…” She smiled sweetly at her partner. “I think I’ll recover better if I’m next to you.”

The pair settled back into the front seat, though not without a little unease. “It feels like I’m sitting in a pool of blood,” Breazeal said. “When we’re both feeling better and we have the time, I kind of want to rip this whole thing out and replace it.”

“Yeah, me too. Even if the stains aren’t real, this chair is going to remind me that I killed a man. I know he deserved it, but still…” Margulis gathered a small bunch of control cables in one hand, reconnecting to the biolyst and the drone on Pluto, as well as a few others. 

She was immediately bombarded with Sentients talking at her, all clamoring to know what had happened. It seemed the fight within the Lotus had broadcast strong emotions to every Sentient around, and such a mix of love and hate that none could make sense of what they were experiencing secondhand. 

“Calm down, everyone,” Margulis said. “It’s over. Everything is okay. The Executor is dead.”

“But what happened?” Ulaal repeated. 

Margulis projected a sigh across the network. “It’s a long story. But to summarize… we found Roviik, dying but not quite dead yet, and he tried to Continue himself into our bodies. We fought him off, but it was difficult. He won’t be bothering us again.”

“That’s possible? I didn’t think kuva could work on machines.” Yachros sounded worried. 

“Maybe it’s because she’s a human, and her being in Sentient bodies doesn’t matter? That would be interesting.” Zyllem proposed a theory, and Margulis was reminded that the Sentients still didn’t know that it had been Breazeal in the Void rather than her. 

“Maybe so,” Margulis said, “but don’t even think about trying to test that experimentally. I know you want to, but don’t.”

“You have endangered my child, human.” Angry words were beamed over from the moons of Uranus. “The list of your crimes grows ever longer and more unforgivable.”

“Hunhow, just… shut up, okay? I’m too exhausted to deal with you too right now.” 

A ping in Margulis’s mind let her know that her partner had finished retracing her path to the Void portal and was ready to cross over. She disengaged from the Sentient chatter to focus on inside. The two members of the Lotus swapped their holdings easily, and Margulis passed drones across the gap one at a time until only three remained under her control. She lined herself up side by side and proceeded back through the portal to Pluto, picking up a larger quantity of bodies again once on the other side. 

“So that was the last one, right?” Dreyelin inquired about the status of the Executors. 

“All but Ballas,” Breazeal clarified, “but he hasn’t been seen in over a year. He’s been on the run ever since Margulis and I got him accused of apostasy.”

“He’s not in command of the Orokin anymore and that’s the most important thing,” Dreyelin said. “Of course, I’ll still gladly execute him if I get the chance.”

“Once more through the whole list, just to be sure,” Yachros declared. “Ballas shot Augusta. Ballas went into exile. Avantus was killed by Grineer in the early days of the uprising. Zyllem killed Nellinu on Ganymede. I killed Tuvul on Titan–”

“Unless he resurrected when you weren’t looking,” Ulaal interjected. 

“I’m quite sure he didn’t. Now, as I was saying, I killed Tuvul on Titan, then Zyllem got another one. Ze drove Drassil into a trap around Neptune, and that was six. Roviik was number seven, killed by Margulis. Good job, human.”

“Thank you, Yachros,” Margulis said. “And remember, there can’t be any more than those seven because of the situation with Ballas.” She took a moment to review the Orokin legal rules that had helped bring down their own empire. “Executor status is granted, confirmed, and maintained by rituals involving kuva. That’s the only way to enforce a totally binding contract, similar to how Dax compulsion works. None of the usual replacement rituals can work without the Prime Executor playing a part, and he’s run away. And they can’t just promote someone else to Prime Executor in Ballas’s place, because the original founders thousands of years ago were a group of idiots.”

Several of the Sentients chuckled at her words. “What I mean is,” she continued, “they never considered that one of their own might go rogue. The only way to stop being an Executor is either to formally resign or to die. There is no legal method to remove someone from the Council against their will, and anyone who tried would breach their own kuva contract and die instantly. Orokin leadership was doomed from the moment Augusta charged Ballas with a capital crime.”

An air of satisfaction permeated the group. “I guess that’s it, then,” Yachros proclaimed. “I’ll put the word out to demoralize any remaining loyalists, and then it’ll just be a bit of cleanup. After all this time… I am ready to be done.” 

The sentiment was echoed by the others. No one dared bring up the looming issue that remained, the question of what to do once the war was over. It lingered in the back of everyone’s minds, but for now at least, this was a time to celebrate their accomplishments. 


	5. Chapter 5

It was time to bring up the looming issue that remained. Two days after the debacle with Executor Roviik, Margulis was feeling much better. She and Breazeal had both made a full recovery from their mental wounds, though the planned renovation of their internal ship had not yet gone ahead. But the peace and quiet they had enjoyed could not last forever.

“So,” Margulis said to her partner. “The war’s just about over. What now?”

“We’re close, but not done yet. There are still a lot of lower-level commanders around, and some Dax who can’t desert. But you’re right, the Empire won’t recover quickly from this, if at all. I’d consider Tau to be safe from Orokin colonization.”

“But will the others think the same? We do have a plan to get everyone home now, or at least part of a plan.”

“Yes, and I know Yachros at least will take any chance we give zem to return to Tau. Ze really misses some of the people back home. Dreyelin might feign reluctance but she’ll also go along with the plan. Zyllem’s a bit of a wild card. Ze’s joked about wanting to stay here and set zemself up as monarch over the humans.”

“I hope ze’s not serious. I’d rather not get into a fight with zem again. Mainly though, I’m worried about Hunhow. How are we going to get him to stop fighting?”

“That’s a good question.” Breazeal was silent for a moment. “I can’t think of anything really. He just enjoys killing humans too much.”

“Hasn’t he been badly injured for months? He’s low on ships. The logical move would be to retreat.”

“It would be, but this is Hunhow we’re talking about. Maybe he wants to be a martyr or something, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how he’s my parent but we ended up so different.”

The two Lotuses pondered for a while. Should they try to drag Hunhow back to Tau against his will? Should they stand by and not interfere as he slowly got himself killed by the remnants of the Orokin? Should they fight him themselves to protect his innocent victims, even if it led to Breazeal killing her own father? Was there any possible way to convince him to leave humanity alone of his own accord?

The conversation fell flat as neither could formulate an idea they thought would work. The Lotus returned to directing the Tenno for a while, each member mulling over the options as they worked.

Finally Margulis spoke up again. “I know what we have to do,” she said, though she didn’t seem happy to have come up with a plan. “It’s the only thing I can think of, to preserve life on all sides.”

Breazeal listened as Margulis explained her idea. After hearing it, she too was not particularly enthusiastic. “That’s… really not ideal. But I suppose… well, it’s marginally better than anything I’ve come up with. Technically it does maximize both human and Sentient life.”

“I’ll keep thinking, but we should get everything ready for the current plan since we can. We’ve got the foundries, we’ve got the Void keys, what else do we need?”

“Do we have the material to use in the foundries?”

Breazeal’s innocuous question punctured a hole in Margulis’s plan. “Uhh… we have plenty of ferrite, but that won’t work. Hold on, actually, maybe we can–”

Margulis didn’t even finish her own sentence. Her attention was already elsewhere, stretching into drones near Earth, where she could send a message to someone who might help them with the Hunhow situation.

“Hello, Unum? I need some advice.”

“Greetings, Lotus. I did not expect to speak with you for several more days. What is it that you seek?”

“What did you do to stand up to Gantus for so long?”

There was a long silence over the open communications channel as the Unum ran calculations, realigning its predictions of all the futures that could follow from this moment, and all the pasts that could have led up to it. Finally it projected a number into Margulis’s mind: “You will succeed at your goal in seventy-seven point three percent of possible futures.”

“...Okay, I like those odds, but I never actually told you what my goal is.”

“You don’t need to. It’s a weighted average of all possible goals you might have which the information you asked for would be relevant to. I held my ground against Gantus by picking off the smallest drones first, in large numbers, and–”

“Of course, because losing drones hurts the same regardless of size…”

“–and when the Sentient retreated, I sent my people to collect the pieces left behind, and I fashioned them into armor on my tower.”

A new realization dawned on Margulis with these words. “Thank you so much,” she said. “You’ve been extraordinarily helpful. Just one more thing – what was that about talking to me a few days from now?”

“You will know when it is time,” the Unum replied cryptically. “When you hear my call, please attend the show and receive the gift.” Transmissions from the tower cut off without permitting a response.

With nothing more taking place at Earth, Margulis pulled her consciousness back and reported her findings to Breazeal. It would take a little personal sacrifice, but their plan could go ahead.

“Hello, you two.” A new voice came across the link. “What are you up to?”

“This really isn’t a good time, Zyllem. We’re busy.” Breazeal tried to shoo the other Sentient away.

“Of course you are. That’s why I’m here. You’re plotting something unpleasant, and I want in.”

There was an awkward pause as the two members of the Lotus stared at each other across their virtual ship. They had the same unspoken questions in their eyes: what did Zyllem know, and how? Why was ze approaching them? Could anything ze said really be believed?

They must have waited too long without an answer, as Zyllem continued, “Come on, you’re both projecting that ‘I’m up to no good’ feeling to the whole solar system. It’s subtle, but did you really think I wouldn’t recognize it?”

“...Fine. We’re working on something that will allow the Sentients to return home.” Margulis’s words were technically true, in the sense that eliminating Hunhow would remove the biggest obstacle to ending the war. “If you want to help, we’ll need as many of your drones as you can spare.”

“Oh? And what would you want me to do with all those drones? There are no human targets left that are big enough to need that kind of attack. You wouldn’t be planning to backstab someone, now, would you…?” Zyllem laughed maniacally. “Oh, you really are, I can read it in the way you try to hide your feelings.”

“We’re not trying to murder Hunhow!” Breazeal’s outburst came out angrier than she intended. “And we didn’t ask for your help, but if you insist on making yourself a part of this, you can take all those excess drones you have and deconstruct them, and build as many flat hexagonal plates of exilus alloy as you can. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have an urgent alert coming in from the Tenno that we need to take care of.”

“Hmm… interesting plan. I suppose you’ll be wanting exactly twelve pentagons to go along with them?” the other Sentient asked. “I can get you all that, though I do wonder how you’re going to get it all in place. Do let me watch, okay? I must say, I didn’t think you were capable of this sort of treachery. Oh, but what do I know about backstabbing, I’m just the person who tricked the Orokin into attacking themselves on multiple occasions. Go take care of your little human children. I’ve got this.”

Breazeal was considering temporarily blocking the Lotus off from the Sentient network, but Zyllem backed off so there was no need. She copied the incoming message from the Tenno squad to Margulis, then got up from the pilot seat and walked back to the display of the solar system where they kept all their tactical information. Margulis followed her, frowning as she listened to the message.

“This isn’t good,” Breazeal began. She waved a hand at the display and a point of light appeared in the vast empty space between planets. “The enemy is at our doorstep, so to speak. That shipment of new warframes we’ve been collecting for a while has been intercepted. I just told them to defend the cargo until reinforcements arrive, but they’re nowhere near a solar rail.”

“How long would it take us to get there?”

Breazeal sketched out a few potential flight paths on the map. “From Lua, two hours. From anywhere else, even longer.”

Ever the innovator, Margulis proposed trying out the Lotus’s latest new trick again. “Can we get there using the Void? Does their ship have a portal? ...Does the attacking ship have a portal?”

“The Orokin ship?” Breazeal was overcome with laughter. “Oh, wouldn’t that be a sight to behold! Talk about getting behind enemy lines.” She paused to check in with the Tenno team. “Nope, sorry, no portal on their ship and they don’t know about the other.”

“Can we jump without a portal?”

Breazeal looked at Margulis like she was insane. “ _Void fissures?_ You want to use _fissures_ to get us there? I think you’ve just invented the only thing more terrifying to the Orokin than Sentient fighters jumping out of one of their own portals. That’s exactly the kind of half-baked idea I was hoping you’d have, and I love it. Where would I be without you?” She drew Margulis into an embrace and kissed her on the lips.

Suddenly her eyes widened, and she pulled away. “Oh! That reminds me.” She kissed her girlfriend again, even more passionately. When they finally separated, she explained, “That was for getting me into the Void the other day. I did warn you it was coming.”

Margulis raised one eyebrow. “Does it really count, if you just stick two kisses back to back like that? I think you still owe me one – but after we save these Tenno and the cargo.” She shifted over to the Tenno network and contacted the defense team, asking if they had a Void key with them, or any sort of Void beacon.

They did not. What use would they have for such things, on a voyage through realspace?

“Alright, Tenno, how about this. When you hear the signal, I want one of you to leave your warframe and then go back in again. And then repeat. Out and in, out and in, as regular as you can make it. The Transference pulses should act as a signal for me to lock onto. Actually, no, I’ll need at least two of you to do that so I don’t accidentally drop the reinforcements onto your somatic link instead. Got it?”

The Tenno seemed more than a little confused, but they agreed to carry out the plan. Back in the virtual ship, Margulis studied the solar map, looking at the details of Lotus supplies in search of a place with a good number of drones and Void keys together. There, in orbit around Neptune’s moon Triton: a stockpile of several dozen keys, watched over by ten drones with another ten inactive in storage nearby.

“Okay, Breazeal, I think everything is ready now. This should work. I’ll make the jump because I’m more used to having a small number of bodies, then you can pick them up again on the other side and use them to fight.”

“Sounds good. I guess that means I’ll give the Tenno your signal.”

“Get ready to transport the biolyst over there too. One of the Tenno mentioned they have a defector with them. The biolyst will need a ship, but once the reinforcements are there they can serve as a beacon for the ship to fly to. Just remember to leave some room, don’t warp the little ship out inside the bigger ship.”

Margulis took control of the fleet of twenty drones above Triton and pulled back from everywhere else. She inserted her consciousness into the transport ship itself as well, to make use of the equipment within in order to outfit each drone with its very own Void key. All she had to do was activate them, and each key would twist a small region of space around it into the Void. There was no time to properly channel and contain them into a more stable portal.

“Send the signal. Jumping in three… two… one…” Margulis sent a surge of energy into the keys. Each one flared with a bright yellow light, oversaturating her visual sensors. The light faded not back to the dark interior of a Sentient transport ship, but to an endless shifting swirl of white and blue in all directions. Margulis now floated in a gravityless space with no landmarks to get her bearing.

In the distance shone points of darkness like inverted stars. These were beacons, entry points back to the physical world, but the location each one connected to was impossible to discern from this side. There was always a vague sense that portals near each other in normal space would be near each other in the Void, but this quickly broke down over larger separations. Given the nonphysical nature of this realm, it was always possible to end up in a distant, unfamiliar part of the universe, and the naive assumption that physical laws of distance or direction still applied in the Void had cost the lives of many brave explorers in the early days of faster-than-light travel.

Somewhere out here, four of these false stars should be blinking: two right next to each other, and two others alone in another part of the sky. Margulis estimated that the Tenno could probably activate their Transference abilities once every few seconds, though whether the pulses of Void energy appeared upon both entering and exiting a warframe, or if it was only one way or the other, she didn’t know.

She arranged her twenty drones into a loose approximation of a sphere, all facing outward from the group to scan the sky. This was a task better suited for the computer hardware built into her many bodies than her conscious human mind. She redirected power from her weapons systems into the sensors, keeping only a minimum of power in the levitation circuits to prevent her from drifting away from herself on an invisible current.

Her first scan, searching for pulses around a frequency of twice per second, revealed nothing. She adjusted the target range gradually downward: three pulses in two seconds, once per second exactly, a little slower than once per second. Finally a blip showed up in the scanners. Margulis focused in on the part of the sky her computer systems had indicated and strained to see the two tiny pinpricks flashing there.

She broke out of the spherical formation and willed herself forward. Traditional methods of movement such as the levitation circuits still worked in the Void, but suffered from the same limitation as everything else that was based on realspace physics. Ultimately, to get anywhere in the Void, you had to abandon your intuition and work with the Void’s own rules: mind over matter, even for the most outlandish feats. As long as Margulis was focused on moving toward her goal, as long as she _wanted_ with every fiber of her being to arrive there, it would be so.

Margulis knew she was moving, but she had no frame of reference to know her speed. Was speed even a meaningful concept here, in the absence of a fixed spatial metric? But the two points of darkness ahead of her were growing farther apart from each other, slowly at first but picking up speed in accordance with the parallax that would be expected.

Suddenly the pair of blinking darks shot out to either side. Margulis stopped and spun around, and found them behind her. She was floating practically on top of the beacons, but still they appeared as miniscule points, almost indistinguishable from the background of similar dark spots all around her in the sky of the Void. She spread her fleet out to surround both points so she wouldn’t lose track of them, paused to mentally prepare herself for the jump back to realspace, and then surged the Void keys on her drones once again.

Twenty flashes of yellow burst into existence within a large chamber on a stolen Grineer galleon. From each one, a Sentient drone tumbled. Most clattered to the floor as they emerged upside down or at odd angles relative to the artificial gravity on the ship, but Margulis managed to keep a few upright and quickly recovered the rest. Startled humans scattered at the sight of her.

“I made it,” she said to Breazeal. “You take it from here.” A gentle tug at the edge of her mind told her the Sentient was ready to swap with her to handle the fighting.

“How was the trip?” Breazeal asked.

“Fine, I suppose, but I never want to do that again. Being out there alone in the middle of all that nothing… it’s easy to see how the Zariman was lost for eight years. And that was a massive ark ship five miles long. If we had reliable beacons on known frequencies I think it would be less scary, but I don’t think it’s possible to get truly comfortable with the Void.”

A minute passed as Breazeal chased the attackers out of the Tenno’s ship, before her attention returned to Margulis’s words. “I’m done over here,” she said. “Are you on your way with the biolyst?”

“I will be as soon as you switch those keys on at half power so I’ve got a beacon to aim for. I’m hitching a ride on a Tenno ship. Ordis can get me there faster than I can fly myself.” A journey of several hours in realspace could be shortened to mere minutes in the Void — for what was Void travel, really, except a carefully controlled application of fissures?

Before she knew it, Margulis was there again in person, stepping aboard the formerly Grineer vessel from the Liset that had brought her there. Breazeal’s drones guided her to where the Tenno awaited, with their precious cargo of new warframes and blueprints. Three Tenno greeted her: one using a Chroma, named Serreta; an Excalibur, named Jumol; and one in a new warframe which Margulis did not recognize, who only waved shyly.

The unfamiliar warframe was painted in shades of fuchsia with cream accents, and had a distinctive helmet with two parts sticking straight up like squared-off horns. “Hello there,” Margulis said, stepping up to greet the defector. “You must be the newcomer. Welcome. I’m Margulis, also known as the Lotus.” She waved a hand toward the Sentient drones. “That’s Breazeal, also also known as the Lotus. What’s your name?”

“Oh, um, I’m…” The Tenno mumbled something and shrank away from Margulis’s approach.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that…?”

“My name is, uh…” The Tenno’s voice got softer with every word. “It’s Rell.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Rell. Welcome to the team.” Margulis offered a handshake, but Rell didn’t take it. She held her hand up awkwardly for a moment before returning it to her side. “Would you like to tell me how you encountered these two? Maybe leave the warframes behind and relax for a while? Breazeal can handle defense for us now. You all have your orbiters docked to this ship, I suppose?”

“Our ships are here,” Jumol said, indicating himself and the Chroma. “He doesn’t have one. We didn’t find a link near where we picked him up.”

Margulis looked to Rell for confirmation, and the odd warframe nodded. “The red people took me and put me to sleep, and I woke up somewhere else, like this. It’s been so long. Can you get the real me back?”

“I believe so. We’ve done this before when a Tenno wishes to leave Orokin control. All we need is an empty somatic link and a bit of trickery. Or is it two links? Breazeal, how did we do this last time? It’s been a while.”

A voice was projected from the drones for all to hear, in a similar fashion to the speakers built into warframes. “Either works, actually, but you set them up differently. To use only one extra link you just connect it as normal and boost the power to overwhelm the existing one – though the easiest way to do that is to hook up a second link in series with it. Or you can connect two in parallel, but one goes forwards and the other in reverse. I believe the parallel version is safer, but to be honest we haven’t done this enough to be sure.”

“Serreta, Jumol, we’re going to need you both to come out, if that’s okay.” Both Tenno immediately appeared in a swirl of light in front of their warframes. “No, not like that. I mean, you’re out, but you’re still linked to the pods at the same time. It’s a sort of third dream, if you will. You need to wake up from the first dream.”

Serreta looked away and brought her arms up across her chest. She shuffled her feet nervously, but voiced no opposition to the idea aloud. Jumol gently took her arm and they walked out together toward their orbiters. Breazeal followed with most of her drones, ready to assist with the heavy lifting needed to get two somatic link pods into position.

While they were away, Margulis tried again to engage Rell in conversation. “So, how are you feeling?”

“I’m okay, I guess. Nothing really in particular.”

“You must be relieved to be here with the other Tenno though, right? You’re safe here. You don’t have to fight anymore if you don’t want to.”

“Relieved, I suppose. I don’t know. I like being away from the red people, but do I really need to be feeling something about it?”

“Oh, well, I guess not. Sorry.” Margulis was a little flustered by the exchange and tried to change the subject. “Can you tell me about these red people who took you? Did they have other Tenno? Is this a new threat we should be worried about?”

Rell nodded, but his words were less than confident. “I don’t know much. They wore red, with veils over their faces. You’d expect a little white, a little gold, but they had none. A conspicuous absence of white and gold. I think they were Orokin but didn’t want people to know it. Their leader was named Piacula. They wanted me to tell them things but I couldn’t, I didn’t know. Things about the Void, and the Zariman. They knew I saw things there. I don’t know how.”

“You saw things on the Zariman? What sort of things?”

“I don’t know… It was years ago. A man in the wall. I’ve heard him talking to me, even after leaving the ship. The red people think he lives in the Void, watching us, waiting.” Rell pulled his arms close and made himself look as small as possible within the warframe he wore. “Please, I don’t know if he’s even real. I can’t tell you any more.”

The first somatic link was slowly carried in and set up in the middle of the open area. Jumol gave a silent thumbs-up as he and Serreta left with the crowd of drones to pick up the other.

“It’s okay, Rell,” Margulis said. “You don’t have to talk about it, I was just curious. Is there anything else you know about the people in red? I just want to make sure you’re safe.”

“They took me from Lua, more than a year ago. I remember so well. The man in the wall was talking to me and it made me so angry, what he was saying. I tried to make him go away but I hit the nice woman Rosie instead, in the eyes. She was angry and I ran away. I ran and the red people found me. They knew her name.”

“Rosie… you worked with Archimedean Rosalind?” Margulis’s sightless eyes went wide beneath her mask. “I knew her! If she was blinded like me, that would explain why she suddenly left the program. It wasn’t your fault, Rell. None of the Tenno could control their powers. I’ve never blamed the little one who burned me, and I would never cast out a child in need.”

“The red people punished me,” Rell continued. “They asked me about the man in the wall and they whipped me every time I didn’t know something. They tried to make me punish myself too. None of it made me know any more. The man in the wall tormented me. He knows things I’ve never told anyone. One day Piacula started talking about some ritual to seal him back in the Void, using me as a sacrifice. No cost too great, she said. No blood too precious.

“I was supposed to be some kind of pure vessel who would ascend, and leave behind the refuse and regret of the mortal world. They needed me because my mind is different. Born of God and Void, they called me, but I don’t believe in any gods. Their watchers and teachers and that beast who whipped me, they were going to chain me up in their temple to seal the Void-man within my dreams forever. Then the Tenno came and brought me here.”

Margulis was horrified by the boy’s story. “None of that is going to happen to you now,” she reassured him. “We’ll get your human body away from them. Even if this man in the wall is real, no one kidnaps a Tenno and gets away with it.”

The second Transference pod was brought in. “What do we do now?” Jumol asked.

Breazeal took the lead and gave directions. “First, let me record the energy frequencies for your two warframes while they’re active, so I can set them back again when we’re done.” She brought her drones up close around the Excalibur and the Chroma to scan them thoroughly. An oculyst might have done the job better, but the fighters were sufficient to get the measurements she needed. “Alright, now you two wake up. We need your pods empty.”

The two warframes moved in unison to sit down on a nearby row of crates. Serreta laid her head against Jumol’s shoulder, though her Chroma was larger than the Excalibur next to her. Jumol put one arm around the other warframe’s waist, then both warframes froze in place as their operators ceased controlling the mechanical bodies. The two pods’ lids slowly rose up to reveal the Tenno inside, yawning as they opened their eyes.

Jumol slid out of his pod first. He was rather short and stocky, with black skin and a fluffy mass of hair ringing his head. He went to the side of the other pod and gently helped Serreta down. They made quite the contrast next to each other, as Serreta was extremely pale, average height for her seventeen years but rail-thin, with hair cut short. The pods closed on their own once the Tenno were out.

Rell watched the pair walk over to sit by their warframes, focusing intently on the way Serreta moved. “You’re not well,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“I’m fine,” Serreta grumbled. “Lotus, what do we do now?”

“Your part’s done. Rell, you come over here.” Breazeal floated over between the two somatic links. “Wait, no, I’ve got to flip the polarity of one of these first. Margulis, I need your human hands for this.”

The switch in control was effortless. Margulis now floated off to the side in a few of the drones, while Breazeal took the biolyst and knelt down at the back of Jumol’s pod. Rell watched them both with suspicion. Breazeal flipped open a control panel and reached inside to unscrew two of the white vine-cables within. She twisted them around each other to reconnect them in the opposite order, then closed the hatch and stood up.

“Okay, that’s done, now we recalibrate the pods to match this warframe’s signature.” Breazeal now spoke through human vocal cords. She moved a drone up to the fuchsia warframe to scan it like she had done with the others, then turned two knobs on the back of each Transference pod. “Now, Rell, if you’ll just… what’s wrong?”

“What did you do with Margulis?” he demanded, speaking to the biolyst.

“Oh, I’m right over here. We just switched bodies.” Margulis lifted a conculyst club and waved to the Tenno. “Sorry, I guess that can be a little disconcerting when you’re not used to it.”

Jumol’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow, I didn’t even notice. You do that without Transference?”

Breazeal nodded and tapped her forehead. “It’s all in the mask. Sentient tech, not Void-based like your warframes.” She motioned for Rell to come to her, and led him around in a circle around the pod that she had modified. About two thirds of the way around, she suddenly held up a hand and told him to stop. One step further, and back; a step in the other direction to be sure… and back to the original position.

“Your physical body is currently somewhere in that direction,” she said, pointing from the warframe directly away from the pod. “There are no planets that way, so they must have you on a ship… but not for much longer. If you’re ready, just stand right there and don’t move.”

Rell waited where he was told to. “Do it. I’m ready.”

Breazeal took up position behind the reconfigured somatic link. “Can one of you with hands go over to the other one? All you’ve got to do is twist the power knob from zero to a hundred when I tell you. It’s the one on the right.” Jumol stood up and put a hand on the dial.

“Alright, here we go. This won’t be comfortable, but it will be over soon.” Breazeal slowly turned the power knob of the backward link. The Transference energy, tuned to the same identifying frequency as Rell’s active warframe, overlapped with and cancelled an increasing fraction of the energy which tethered his body and warframe together. A gradient of Void potential formed from the original link housing Rell’s physical form, through the warframe and into the negative well that Breazeal had created. Far away, in the pod aboard a Red Veil ship, the Tenno’s body faded partially into the invisible Void mode that under normal circumstances would let him effortlessly teleport over short distances.

Rell swayed on his feet and put a hand to his head. The unorthodox Transference setup had him disoriented, and there was still more to come. As Breazeal turned her power knob up to fifty percent, she gave the signal to Jumol to turn the other one on and crank it to the maximum. Breazeal rushed the second half of her own pod’s power up to full at the same time.

There was no visual indication that anything had happened, but Rell no longer seemed dizzy or nauseous despite the inverted link being stronger now than it had been before. Breazeal stepped away from the machine to face Rell. “Do you know how to wake up from there?” she asked.

Rell shook his head.

“Well, maybe one of your fellow Tenno can explain it. I’m sure they’d do a better job than I would.”

Serreta rose to go to him, but stood up too fast and nearly blacked out. Jumol steadied her, and when she had recovered she continued on as if nothing had happened. “To wake up, you need to feel like you’re going to sleep,” she said. “You’re in a dream within a dream, and you need to close it out to return to the first dream. Now, you don’t have proper eyes in that form, but cover your sensors…” She reached up to cover the pink warframe’s face, with her other hand resting on Rell’s arm.

“No! No touching!” Rell twisted away and brushed at the hands touching him. The warframe’s mechanical strength and weight overwhelmed the frail girl and sent her tumbling to the ground. At the sight of what he had done, he cried out again, “No, no, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

He backed away as both Jumol and Breazeal rushed to Serreta’s aid. After a few steps he stumbled and sat down hard on the ship floor. His hands were pressed against the sides of his head where human ears would be, but the auditory sensors of that unknown warframe could be anywhere. “Stop it,” he mumbled to himself. “Leave me alone.” He paused, staring into space at a figure only he could see. “You don’t know that! Why won’t you stop tormenting me?” Another pause as Rell listened to the hateful words of the man in the wall. “That’s not true, I can be good… Just go away!”

The others looked on as Rell curled up on the floor, still talking to a persecutor which only made itself known to him. His words gradually became softer and softer as he retreated into the depths of his mind to escape the hostile voice, until finally the fuchsia warframe was silent and still.

The lid of one of the Transference pods clicked and swung open. Within lay a boy of eighteen years dressed all in red, with a round face and short-cropped brown hair. He stirred and rubbed his eyes, then sat up and stretched. “What happened?” he asked aloud to the room. “Did I black out again? Wait, where…” He suddenly saw his human hands in front of his face. “I’m me again!”

“Congratulations, Rell,” Breazeal said. “You’re away from those red veiled people for good.”

Rell’s face lit up with a wide grin. “I feel… happy? I haven’t been happy in a long time. Thank you so much, Lotus. Thank you, Tenno. You’ve been so nice to me, when the other Tenno were so mean.”

Serreta offered some words of support. “We don’t care that you’re different. You’re damned good with that pistol and speargun, and we might not have defended this shipment without you. We’re lucky to have you with us, Rell.”

“But… I hurt you.”

Serreta smiled sadly. “Everything hurts me. It’s not your fault my body is like this. It’s just something I have to live with.”

Rell slid out of the Transference pod, and Breazeal took that cue to reconfigure the two somatic links again. The reversed one was no longer needed to cancel out the influence of Rell’s original pod now that he was awake, so they could both be reset to the characteristic frequencies of their owners.

Jumol began drifting toward the storage rooms where the collection of new warframes were held, but Serreta stayed put, waiting patiently for her pod to become operational again. The moment it was done, she climbed back in and pulled the lid down over her body, reestablishing the connection to her Chroma. Jumol and Rell remained as humans, and the three Tenno led the way to show the Lotus their spoils of war.

Meanwhile, the two members of the Lotus swapped bodies again, Margulis returning to the familiar biolyst, though she also kept a pair of drones as well. She let the Tenno know of the switch.

The first storage room was entirely filled with Excaliburs. Seven were the Primed version, the original warframe first invented by the Orokin, which remained extremely popular even late in the war. The last was a Lotus-built imitation that had now changed hands multiple times. One look was all that was needed to take in the room’s contents.

In the second room there was more variety. Jumol led the way, going straight to the back corner where he stood proudly to display one particular warframe. “This is probably our prize catch,” he said. “It’s the only one we’ve seen in the field so far, and we captured it.”

Margulis’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the warframe before her. She looked over to Breazeal to see her reaction, then felt silly because her partner currently occupied only expressionless drones. “That’s a Chroma Prime,” she breathed.

Breazeal was in shock at the sight. “How did they make that?” she demanded, indignant. “They’ve never captured a Chroma. Did they really make a blueprint just from scans? Chroma was my best invention! A warframe that’s adaptable like a Sentient, able to change damage types at will. And now they’ve gone and stolen it. Where did you find this?”

“On Callisto,” came a voice from the normal Chroma. “Jumol and I were part of a team that responded to a Sentient request for help there not long ago. We found this thing modulating its damage output to bypass the Sentients’ own adaptation – hence the call for help.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that!” Margulis thought back to the time in question. “That was Yachros, I think. Ze went in expecting a routine base clearout and ended up in over zer head, and ze asked me if I could send any Tenno zer way. I guess that was you.”

“That was us,” Jumol confirmed. “And if they ever make another one, we’d be happy to steal that one for you too. I just wish the hostile Tenno weren’t trained to cut the link so fast, so we could talk to them. But as soon as they’re disarmed and restrained, they just abandon ship. I don’t know how they afford the losses.”

“That’s something we’ve been wondering for a long time,” Breazeal said. “How do the Orokin make new warframes so much faster than we can? The secret must be in this odd material they use, but I have no idea what it is. It’s solid but has a slight give to it, like a hard plastic, but it’s also soft to the touch like suede. I’ve even cut one open before and it’s the same stuff all the way through. I don’t understand it.”

“Well, knowing the Orokin, it’s probably something horrible that we wouldn’t want to replicate anyway,” Margulis commented dryly. “Just show us what else you’ve got.”

“There are some other pretty cool warframes today too, just take a look over here…” Jumol led the group around to the other side of the room, past a pair of Embers, a Mag, and a Volt, all covered in the golden flair that marked them as Orokin. “This here is something they call Saryn, and it’s a real nasty piece of work. Poison gas, poisoned weapons, even poison skin. Good thing it’s safely contained in a cryopod.”

Margulis grimaced. “Oh, wow. That sounds like a real killing machine.”

“On par with a good Volt. I’m not sure it would do much to Sentients, but a single Tenno in this can massacre hundreds of Grineer – or Orokin.”

“I’m sure they could… But honestly, that just seems inhumane, using all that poison. Feels like a war crime just to stand here next to it. Let’s just leave that one in storage, okay? What else is there?”

Jumol slipped through the crowd out of the small room to lead the way to the final stash of warframes. “Over here… well, first we’ve got a couple more Mirage Primes, another Mag, a Trinity, but those we’ve seen before. The interesting one is this.” He led the group to a tall beige warframe, almost skeletal looking, with accents in blue and red. “Behold… the Inaros!”

“This is our most recent collection,” Serreta explained. “We found it on Mars, terrorizing the local populace. After defeating it, we figured that was enough and steered the shipment toward Lua. We got attacked midway, and here you are.”

“Where on Mars was this?” Rell spoke up, a note of worry in his voice.

“Multiple settlements all over the Syrtis Major region, why?”

“That’s not far from where my family is from. I lived in Amenthes until I was nine. Do you think they could have been hurt?”

Margulis felt the urge to put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder, but thought better of it. “I’m sure they’re fine, Rell. If you want to go home and see them, we’ll arrange for a transport ship. The Lotus doesn’t force any Tenno to fight, if you don’t want to.”

Rell considered her words for a moment, then suddenly looked over at an empty space in the room and glared angrily at nothing. When he looked back, his eyes were filled with determination. “I want to go back to Mars,” he said, “and I want to take the Inaros.” He stared defiantly at the wall again, lips moving ever so slightly though no sound came out. Returning his attention to Margulis, he continued, “There’s someone I need to prove a few things to. I’m going to take this warframe home, and I’m going to save everyone.”

“Okay then. We’ll get you a personal orbiter and landing craft, and your own somatic link. You’ll be able to wake up there whenever you want to, and if you ever want to stop fighting you can.”

“But it will take some practice,” Serreta interjected. “It’s easier to wake up in a warframe than as a human, and if you spend too long dreaming you run the risk of forgetting there was ever a reality. Believe me, I know it too well.”

“That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about, Serreta,” Breazeal chimed in. She motioned for the girl in her warframe to come with her out of the cramped space, leaving the others to discuss the logistics of getting Rell set up as a warrior Tenno for the Lotus. “What sort of illness do you have? If I know what it is, I can find you a cure.”

“There is no cure. It’s a genetic disease that causes muscle atrophy and eventually organ failure. The mutation is on a piece of DNA that’s spooled up too tightly to get at it without cutting through other important strands. The good part is that it only affects the body, not the mind, and while I’m in the somatic link I don’t feel my human body.”

“But it’s still affecting you! Staying in a warframe all the time won’t cure you. There’s got to be some way. I’m a robot – I can read through every bit of human medical literature in existence in a week. Let me try.”

Serreta shook her head. “You won’t find anything. My family’s had this problem for generations. I had an aunt with the same condition, and she became a Cephalon at age twenty-one. Becoming a Tenno is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. In a warframe I am strong. I can run, and jump, and climb. I can carry people to safety. As a human I can’t even take care of myself, let alone anyone else.”

Breazeal tried to protest again but Serreta didn’t let her speak. “I’ve always known I wouldn’t have a long time in this world. I don’t want to spend it laying in a hospital bed. Even if the dream doesn’t slow my decline at all, I’ve still got several years left and I can do a lot of good in that time. And when my body can’t sustain me anymore, I can go out with dignity because I’ll know I made a difference in people’s lives.”

Breazeal sighed. “As you wish,” she said. “But I’m going to learn all that human medical knowledge anyway. If there ever comes a time when I can save a person from some deadly condition I want to know how to do it. And that includes you, if possible.”

The pair wandered back over to rejoin the others, who filled them in on what they had been talking about. All five people here would remain on the cargo ship until it reached Lua, and they would help unload the new warframes there. Margulis had already put out a message to the Tenno informing them of the haul, and sent them all a list of the new warframes that were available. First pick of course would go to new fighters and those with a smaller arsenal.

A new Liset was already waiting for Rell in orbit over Lua, with a fresh copy of the much beloved Cephalon Ordis. The somatic link would have to be brought up from the surface, however, so it would be some time before Rell could bring his desert warrior to the defense of his home planet.

“Can I ask one more thing of you, Lotus?” Rell asked.

Margulis nodded. “Of course. What is it?”

“Can you rescue all the other Tenno from the Orokin? I don’t want to be there myself because that many people is too much, but I don’t want anyone else going through what I did. Not even the ones who were so mean to me on the Zariman.”

Margulis looked to her partner. “With this many new warframes, and all the Tenno coming to Lua to pick them up… we probably could mount another assault on the Reservoir. We could free a good number of them.”

“Why not go for all of them at once? Remember, we’ve got more than just some new frames. We’ve got a whole new battle tactic that’s already been proven: the Teleporting Sentient Surprise. Let’s send the Tenno in carrying Void keys then warp my fighters in on top of them. Those Dax will never know what hit them.”

“You’re right, we could. Oh, this is going to be _easy_. What about you, Serreta, Jumol? Want to join the liberation mission?”

There was not a moment’s hesitation from either of them. “Absolutely. We’re in.”


	6. Chapter 6

A Chroma Prime and an Excalibur Prime strode purposefully through the halls of Lua. The Excalibur held his sword by the blade, and tied around the handle was a square of pure white cloth. Both warframes carried Void keys, powered on just enough to provide a visible signal across the gap, and in the Void all around the pair of beacons waited a swarm of lavender Sentient drones. 

“We’re close to the first Reservoir,” Serreta reported in. “Trying peaceful tactics first, but be ready to warp in the reinforcements.” She rounded a corner with her partner and they approached the room ahead, descending the stairs to reach the circle of six Transference pods beyond. 

“Halt! Oh, sorry. Welcome back.” Two human guards jumped to their feet and rushed to meet the Tenno. “What’s with the white flag? We know you’re the good guys.”

Jumol shrugged and gave the prepared half-truth he had memorized for this situation. “Haven’t you heard? Those damn robots stole a bunch of our warframes again. I didn’t want us to get attacked on sight. Anyway, we’ve been sent back here to relieve you and the rest of the guards on Lua. They need warm bodies out there to fight the Grineer.”

“Really? We haven’t heard any orders to that effect.” 

Jumol sighed. “How long have you guys been here? A couple months? Longer? To be honest, whoever used to give your orders is probably dead by now. It’s a mess out there.” 

Serreta jumped in to corroborate his statement. “We’ve come from Callisto, from Secturus Xian Soph. With all the Council gone, he’s one of the top commanders left. He wants to rearrange our forces so they’ll be most effective – humans to fight the Grineer, and Tenno to fight the Sentients. The Grineer don’t care about this place.”

One of the humans nervously scratched the back of his neck. “I think I’d rather stay on the nice quiet guard duty, but if that’s the order I guess we’ll take it. You got the transfer paperwork?”

Both Tenno looked at each other, then back to the human. Jumol raised his hands helplessly. “Uhh, no? Sorry. These things don’t exactly come with pockets.” 

“Oh, I’m just joking with you. Protocol went out the airlock a long time ago. Is there a ship waiting, or should we take our own?”

“If you’ve got one already, take that. We’ll notify the rest of the guards here, so don’t worry about that part.” The Tenno gave an Orokin salute in unison. The two human guards returned the gesture, then walked out in the direction of the nearest airfield. 

The Tenno waited until the guards were out of sight before reporting back. “This one’s done. They never suspected a thing. These Primed frames are great disguises.”

“Good job,” came the transmission from the Lotus in orbit. “The other teams are making good progress too. We’ve only had to fight for one out of five Reservoirs so far.” 

“Yeah, these little ones aren’t even manned by Dax. We’ll hit the rest of these in the area with the same false orders and then Ordis can give us a short hop over to the main cluster.” 

“Don’t enter the primary Reservoir building until I say to. We’ll need the full force there, whether we pose as replacements or fight our way through. Keep your keys on; Margulis is waiting in the Void if you need help.”

Margulis was indeed in the Void, ready to warp drones out to Lua at a moment’s notice, but she would not be the one fighting. She held a hundred and fifty battle drones, taken from all around the solar system and each fitted with its own Void key. When a Tenno called for aid, all she had to do was make the jump with a portion of her forces, trading off control to Breazeal the instant they crossed the gap just as it had been with the stable Void portal in the Orokin base. 

So far, the scheme had worked with only minor faults. The internal ship with its visual representations of the control over each drone helped coordinate the swaps. And when the transfer of control had been a little too slow on the first jump, leaving Margulis stranded on both sides for a moment enduring all the pain that position forced upon her, her death grip on the controls could be gently lifted by an outside hand to relieve her. 

Together the Lotuses watched as their Tenno liberated compound after compound on the moon below. Most Orokin soldiers seemed perfectly happy to take orders from any Primed warframe – after all, these were some of the very same tools that had turned the tide of battle in favor of the Orokin in many a confrontation. And when the deception failed, the sudden appearance of a dozen Sentient fighters out of nowhere was enough to send these humans running for their lives. 

Over the course of hours, Tenno trickled into the area surrounding the primary base, each team having worked their way through one of the seven outlying regions to clear out the opposition through whatever means they could. Once all were gathered, Breazeal outlined the plan to them. 

“So, this is the central Reservoir, with hundreds of dreaming Tenno and probably several dozen Orokin guards. Heatmaps from orbit aren’t telling me much about their distribution, and I can’t send an oculyst in without potentially spooking them, so we’ll be going in here blind. I’d like to avoid an all-out battle if at all possible, because a stray bullet hitting someone’s Transference pod could have dangerous and unexpected effects. But we have a couple of options for how we want to do this:

“First up is the same lie many of you used on the outer groups. It’s worked well so far, but in here there will very likely be Dax. They can’t be tricked with false orders because they won’t feel the compulsion to obey. But depending on the exact orders they do have, there may still be a way to get them all the leave peacefully. Dax are difficult to replace, so they often have a self-preservation clause which we might exploit. 

“The other option is to just run in and hit them with everything we’ve got, and hope to overwhelm them before it turns into a pitched battle. Many of your warframe abilities can target enemy combatants without harming the environment around you. You all have Primed frames, which means you can extract energy from the very traps they may deploy against you. I can warp in my drones as well, either now or as needed inside. 

“What do you all think? One plan, the other, something else? We’re open to any ideas you have as well.”

The crowd of Tenno talked amongst themselves for a while, discussing the merits of each strategy. Most favored a nonviolent approach, preferring trickery and misdirection as Margulis had taught them, but at the same time they had little faith that it would work in this instance. The training Breazeal had given them in large-group battle tactics might be more useful here. 

One of the Tenno spoke up, an Excalibur Prime from the middle of the group. “Yo, Lotus, can I suggest a thing? I think we might have got a third plan here.”

“Of course! Let me hear it.”

The Excalibur waved his arms around at the other warframes around him. “Look at all these Excaliburs we got here! Every one of us is a walking flashbang. We can blind the Dax, and then we hold them down and take their weapons.” 

“Oh, that is brilliant. Sorry, no pun intended.” Breazeal recalled the last time she had fought a large number of Dax, on the day she’d rescued Margulis from the Orokin. “We may even be able to do better than disarming them. If you can take their helmets off, they’re out of the fight completely, but even blinded that may be difficult. Alright, Tenno, split up and go in every entrance at once, and every group keep an Excalibur with you. Make some noise. Draw them toward the center where it’s more open. Make them think you’re here for a raid, but stay out of their reach. This will be easiest if everyone is facing off at one spot.”

Jumol in his Excalibur Prime looked down at the white flag he still carried, and shrugged. “Well, I guess I won’t be needing this anymore,” he said. “Serreta, if you would…?” He held the sword with the flag attached out in front of him. The Chroma Prime beside him drew a great mass of air into some inner chamber, and then exhaled a cone of flame which burned the cloth to cinders. 

The Tenno in the group’s lone Trinity Prime stepped up to organize everyone. “There are sixteen of us,” she said, “and five ways into the compound. That’s four groups of three and one with four. Volt, you’re with me, and then two of the Excaliburs. I can supply energy for four. The other two-Excalibur group should have the Chroma, to make sure there’s some variety. Everyone else, group up however you want.”

The Tenno divided and spread themselves around the edge of the building to wait outside each of the five equally spaced entrances, all maintaining constant radio contact with each other and with the Lotus. Breazeal watched from orbit as the groups, all at once, stormed through the golden doors and began racing toward the center, shouting and banging on every door they passed by. 

One trio led a cry of “Our links belong on our ships!” and the others joined in, adopting the idea that they were all Orokin-led Tenno as their warframes suggested, merely with this grievance they wanted addressed. “Treat your saviors right! If you want us on the battlefield, don’t lock us up on the moon!” 

From the data streams sent to her by all sixteen warframes, Breazeal began to get a mental picture of the layout of the Orokin compound. Just as there had been seven outer regions, and a fivefold symmetry of the central building, soon they would reach a ring-shaped hall blocking their path, with only three ways to the inner section. She called down to the Tenno, warning them of what was ahead and advising each group to turn left when they reached it so as not to run into each other. Her heatmaps showed a blip in the center of the compound as well, but without a Tenno or an oculyst nearby she had no way of knowing what it was. 

Small but growing crowds of Orokin guards followed each Tenno group at a jog, weapons in hand but not firing. Strangely enough, most seemed to be unaugmented humans, with only a handful of Dax spread around the building. They all converged on the central courtyard at once, and Breazeal finally got a look at what was inside. 

The Tenno stood around the outer wall of a massive open area under a dome of glass, a circle easily a hundred meters across, dominated by a fifty foot tall white stone statue in the center which depicted a shirtless man in loose Orokin style pants. He stood with one foot on a model of Lua, using it as a stepping stone as he reached out beyond to grasp a cratered planet. A heavy chain was looped around his waist, and the other end ran up his outstretched arm to wrap around the captured world. Breazeal took a snapshot of it via one of the warframes and sent it to Margulis. “Do you know who this guy is? He’s in the middle of the primary Reservoir.”

The answer came back quickly. “Of course I know who that is! Everyone learns about him in school. That’s Executor Zariman.”

“Like the ship? It was named after a person?”

“All the big numbered ships were. Zariman was the Prime Executor who presided over the relocation of Sedna, a couple millennia ago. That’s why he’s shown with the lasso around the planet like that. He’s credited with bringing a whole new world into the solar system, and in that same spirit of exploration and new frontiers, the first colony ship to Tau was named after him. Of course, Zariman the person lived nine hundred years, while Zariman the ship broke down on its very first jump.” 

The guards following the invading Tenno now found themselves in the middle of the courtyard, as the Tenno split to either side of the doorways and closed them off again after their pursuers were through. They slowly backed away from the assembled warframes, which were now silent and all the more menacing for it, until humans from all directions bumped into each other around the base of the statue. Everyone’s weapons were drawn, but none moved a muscle beyond that. 

The Trinity Prime took two steps forward and raised her voice so the guards could hear her clearly despite their distance. “We are here to liberate these Tenno and grant them the autonomy they deserve! Our bodies belong to us, and no one else!”

The five Dax among the guards moved around to face her, forming a line shoulder to shoulder. The one in the middle called back toward the Tenno, “You are soldiers of the Orokin Empire, and you will obey your superiors! Return to your posts at once!”

“No! Leave this place, all of you, and let us free our comrades!” The Trinity raised one fist in the air. 

“Or what? You’ll attack? You’ll murder your own commanders, your own citizens, and defect to join the Sentients?” 

The Tenno leader sent a silent message to Breazeal as she slowly walked out into the open. “Lotus, send me some drones. Maybe ten, on my signal.” To the Dax ahead of her she shouted back, “Defect? Oh, I think it’s a little late for that!” She spread her arms wide and pinged the Lotus in orbit again. 

Ten lavender drones appeared in flashes of yellow light all around the Trinity, and arranged themselves into lines of five on either side. The humans without Dax training and augmentations suddenly looked even more fearful than they had been already. 

“These Tenno joined me a long time ago,” Breazeal projected in unison from the ten drones. “Humans, I bear you no ill will. You are free to leave. Dax, if you have a self-preservation option in your orders, now is the time to exercise it. I guarantee you all safe passage off the moon.”

The Orokin citizens looked around nervously. While they had signed up to guard the Tenno’s Transference pods, it was likely that none of them had actually seen combat before. Over half had not even thought to bring their standard-issue sidearms with them when pursuing the Tenno to this spot. The warframes blocking the three halls leading out of the courtyard all stepped aside at once, ready to let the guards pass, but stern looks from the Dax kept them all trembling in place. 

The Dax on the far left end of the line raised a radio from his belt and spoke into it. A moment later a loud noise rumbled through the courtyard as the stone model of Lua rolled aside, pivoting the entire statue around its grounded foot and revealing a narrow staircase down into a lower level of the building. More Dax emerged single file from the halls below, until a full two dozen of them ringed the statue. 

“You won’t win this fight, Sentient,” the one who had spoken before challenged. “The Tenno are human, and all humans are subjects of the Orokin Empire. They will remain with us.”

“The Tenno are more than human,” Breazeal shot back. “They were created by the Orokin, but need not obey them. Just like the Sentients.” She requested another warp of reinforcements from Margulis, and thirty more drones appeared in a flash of light. 

One of the normal guards elbowed a Dax in the side and slipped out of the circle, then sprinted for the nearest doorway. The two Dax nearest him tried to catch his arm as he escaped, but only opened a wider gap in their own line. Civilians poured out through the hole and ran for the exit. 

Breazeal sent a transmission to the sixteen Tenno through their internal network. “Tenno, I’m going to need to borrow a few of your ships to transport these people. Ordis can take them to somewhere safe.” Within moments she had enough volunteers to comfortably carry all of the fleeing guards, and she contacted the Ordis of each ship to instruct them. 

“Dax, if any of you also wish to flee, we will not stop you. To those who remain… you will have an honorable, warrior’s death, and I commend your bravery.” 

“I don’t plan on dying today.” The Dax’s voice was belligerent as ever, without a trace of fear. “And I know you won’t die either, but I can still give you a beating. Zariman, arise! Defend your children!”

The rumble of shifting stone came again, louder now, as the giant statue stepped down from the miniature moon. It let the tiny Sedna slip through its fingers but kept hold of the chain, and its eyes gained a blue glow. A bright, cheery voice was projected from the statue’s mouth. “Cephalon Cordow, at your service! Who would you like obliterated today?”

The Dax spokesman waved an arm toward everyone in front of him. “All of them! The Sentients and the Tenno traitors!”

“Absolutely! I would be delighted to assist you in destroying your enemies!” 

Breazeal sent a hurried note to the Tenno. “Well, shit. If I’d known they had something like that I wouldn’t have directed you all to the center. You guys focus on the Dax and I’ll try to handle the statue.” Switching networks, she called out to her partner, “Margulis, give me everything you’ve got. And if there are any more drones with keys attached, anywhere in the system, bring me those as well when you get a chance.” 

Void fissures flashed into existence all around the courtyard as the Dax and statue charged forward. Margulis was sending drones ten at a time in many waves a few seconds apart, so that Breazeal always had a moment to adjust to the load and orient herself. Dozens of battalysts fired at the statue but their blasts seemed to have no effect. 

Two of the Excaliburs released blinding flashes of light from opposite sides of the room, and immediately the other Tenno took advantage of the stunned Dax by launching fireballs and electric zaps at the stationary targets. Followups from Tenno guns downed five of the two dozen Dax. 

The statue of Executor Zariman dropped forward onto one knee and swept its Sedna flail in a wide horizontal arc. Three of the six Tenno in its path managed to jump over the attack and one Mirage narrowly slid beneath the chain, but one Excalibur and the Volt took the full brunt of the impact and were sent flying. The constant barrage of energy bolts on the statue’s back seemed to be getting a reaction now, as it stood up and swung wildly through the air with its model planet. Breazeal danced out of the way of the ball, but two of her drones were clipped by the taut chain and knocked out of the air for a moment. 

On the other side of the courtyard, two Excaliburs held their own against four Dax in a battle of Skana against Skana. Just as one Tenno stumbled and their assailants closed in, a scintillating prism was tossed into the fray by a passing Mirage, helping the warframes regain the upper hand. The Mirage kept running, channeling the bright light of her surroundings through her dual pistols to inflict heavy wounds on each target she passed. 

One of the two Embers, distracted by the Dax all around him, was flattened by the enormous flail. The destroyed warframe’s operator jolted awake in his ship and rubbed his head to shake off the lingering pain. 

“I think we need to swap targets,” called one of the Tenno on a general channel. “Lotus, you take the Dax. We can’t afford to not pay attention to that statue.” 

“Got it,” Breazeal replied. “Zariman is all yours.” The swarm of flying robots pivoted and began firing downward, raining down energy bolts onto the Orokin soldiers’ wide helmets. There was no cover to be found in the open courtyard, and one by one the Dax succumbed to the hail. 

The living statue strode back to the center of the room and with a powerful kick, sent the man-sized Lua globe flying. It bowled over one of the many Excaliburs and the whole building shuddered as it cracked against the far wall. Before the warframe regained its footing, a stone fist slammed down on it, and the Excalibur did not rise again. 

Immediately a shout came from the lone Chroma of the group. “Zariman! Cordow! Whoever you are! Come and get me!” The statue pivoted to see Serreta standing with her arms outstretched in a taunting gesture, her warframe shimmering and emitting sparks into the air. The statue grabbed its model Sedna directly and wound up to throw it, but Serreta stood firm and even sheathed her sword. 

The miniature planet hit her directly in the chest and knocked her backward into the wall. She wobbled only a moment then regained her balance, now overflowing with scorn and fury, and unholstered the Rubico sniper rifle from her back. She took aim as the statue pulled its weapon back into hand, and released a single devastating shot directly into its left eye. The blue glow winked out and the statue’s head jerked back, more out of surprise than any sense of pain. 

Serreta held her ground and lined up another shot as her companions cheered. Just as she was about to center the barrel on the other eye, a spark from her warframe passed in front of her scope and she reflexively squeezed the trigger, a hair too early. Her bullet grazed the statue’s right cheek harmlessly. Her foe’s momentum was not broken and its attack continued uninterrupted, smashing the planet against her side. Under this assault even the Chroma’s enhanced armor buckled, and Serreta too awoke in her orbiter, out of the fight. 

“We can’t keep taking losses like this! There’s got to be some way to take this thing down!”

“I’ve got an idea.” One of the six remaining Excaliburs ran around behind the statue and called for the others to join her. “Excalibur squad, over here! Mags, you too. Lotus, can you keep it distracted?”

Breazeal shifted her dense cloud of battalysts around to the statue’s front, and plastered conculysts all over its chest and arms in an attempt to slow its movement. She paused the continuous fire for just a moment, then blasted at one of the statue’s legs with all her drones at once. The focused barrage left a visible scorch mark on Zariman’s thigh, but had no further effect. 

“Excaliburs, let’s do javelins all at once! All up its back, on three. One, two… three!” A swarm of spectral Skana Primes appeared in the air and plunged themselves into the statue’s legs and back. “Now, Mags, get up there and mess it up inside!”

Both Mag warframes leapt into action. They clambered up the giant’s legs using the javelin hilts as handholds, scaling its back to cling where it could not reach them, and though it thrashed about both held their grip. One Mag focused their energy upwards toward the statue’s neck and head while the other targeted directly under where he clung, and together they created strong magnetic fields around its internal machinery. 

The statue swayed and fell to its knees, and the cheerful voice of Cephalon Cordow called out to the Tenno, “Oh, that tickles! Too much! Stop it, please, I can’t–” The statue shifted its weight and dropped flat on its back onto the floor. Even the last-second blessing from the Trinity was not enough to protect the two Mags from being crushed by the immense weight that fell on them. 

Spurred on by the demise of two more warframes, the remaining Ember jumped up onto the fallen statue’s chest and slammed her hands down onto its stone surface. A ring of fire erupted from the impact and lingered even as the Ember was seized in the statue’s free hand and tossed aside. 

“Does anyone have a big hammer?” One of the Excaliburs called to the group as he stood near the statue’s right hand. He waved his exalted blade and continued, “I’ve got a chisel! Let’s cut this chain!”

A few seconds of silence passed as no one came forward. Finally another Excalibur shouted, “Over here! Someone help me carry this!” The Tenno stood by the crumpled form of the Chroma Prime, the heaviest warframe anyone had brought to the fight. 

Breazeal’s conculysts lifted from their positions where they had been bashing on the statue’s head and floated over to surround the Chroma. She lifted the broken, empty frame up and called, “Volt, help us out!” A surge of energy electrified the air, granting a boost of power and speed to all the drones. 

The Chroma crashed down on the hilt of the exalted blade, over and over again, each time driving the glowing wedge another half inch into the stone. But before it was all the way through, a new voice interrupted and stole some of Breazeal’s attention. 

“Hey, Lotus and Lotus, I’ve got all that stuff you wanted. Where do you want it unloaded?”

Exasperated, Breazeal took a second to reply. “Zyllem, you could not  _ possibly _ have picked a worse time to talk to me. Sometimes I could swear you do this on purpose.” She dropped the connection and returned her gaze to the chisel, but her target was moving now as the statue began to stand up. The Excalibur’s blade was carried with it, still embedded into a link of the chain. 

Still, even though the statue was still armed, a new idea was taking shape in Breazeal’s mind. Zyllem claimed to have brought her huge plates of exilus metal, the material Sentient bodies were made of, which Sentient weapons would not hurt. And what was she intending to do with these plates? Where did she really need them unloaded, in a place Zyllem could not reach?

“Everyone, get away from the statue! As far away as you can!” Breazeal took most of her drones to the edge of the courtyard and hugged the outer wall, and the Tenno followed her lead. All but the Ember made it; it seemed she had received damage to a leg when the giant Zariman grabbed her, and there was no Mag to pull her to safety from a distance. “Ember, if your frame still works, just cut the link. You don’t want to get caught in this.” But the Tenno was already gone, awake in her ship where the order to retreat did not apply. 

Thirty drones flew up to form two large concentric circles above the statue’s head, with one more staying directly over its center to provide a guide for the others. The drones flew in a synchronized pattern, the outer circle spinning one way and the inner rotating opposite it. Every time a pair passed in front of each other and formed a line through the circle’s center, Breazeal pumped a little bit of energy into the Void keys they all carried. She locked the relative positions of the thirty drones in their circles to the guide above with automated flight systems and focused on keeping that one centered as the statue moved. 

The Tenno scattered and ran around the edges of the room as the giant Zariman pursued them. Up above, arcs of yellow lightning began to flash between the drones with every surge. Though the drones’ speed remained constant, the energy arced with greater intensity as the movement continued. It even jumped across the interior of the circles now, and grew in brightness and frequency even more until there was nothing but a flickering sheet of light filling the disk. From the center a ragged hole appeared, and spread the blue and white light of the Void up to the edge of the inner ring. 

“Someone make him attack! He’ll be still for a second as he recovers.” Breazeal floated higher in case Zariman swung the mini-Sedna over his head. A Excalibur ran forward to taunt the statue, baiting it into throwing the stone ball again. The instant the flail stopped and the statue began pulling it back for another strike, Breazeal swooped downward in a single fluid motion to bring the Void portal across the statue’s length. 

Due to the size of her drones she was unable to force the statue all the way through, but when her rings were the lowest they could reach at only a few feet off the ground, she slowed the rotation and brought the two circles into each other. As soon as the two groups of fifteen became a single motionless circle of thirty, the Void energy in the center vanished with an audible crack. Of the statue, only a pair of feet and a model Sedna with a short chain remained, and across the room a globe of Lua now as broken as the moon it represented. 

Breazeal broke formation and took up a comfortable resting cloud shape instead, with a handful of drones at ground level to see eye to eye with the Tenno. “Well, that was quite a mess,” she remarked. “Sorry I didn’t think of the Void trick sooner. I’ve never seen anything like that before, a Cephalon piloting a mech like a discount warframe. They must be hard to build, or else the Orokin would have had them on every battlefield.”

“So you just… banished it? Tossed it into the Void?”

“Yep. Executor Zariman is now lost out there, just like his ship once was. With luck, this one will never come back.” 

The ten remaining Tenno of the sixteen looked around the room at the twisted wreckage of their companions’ fallen warframes. “So, um, should we clean this up, or…” 

“I’ll get it,” Breazeal said. “You all take a look downstairs and make sure there are no more Orokin people here, but don’t go waking anyone up just yet. I can handle that gradually with the human body present.” She lowered her swarms around each broken warframe or fragment and then paused. “Actually, no, maybe I won’t get it. Whatever this weird material is that they make Primed frames out of, it’s not very conductive. I can’t induce a magnetic field strong enough to pick it up.” 

A pair of Excaliburs offered to help her out, but she waved them off. “No, no, I’ll just push the stuff around like some kind of primitive non-flying creature. I may not have opposable thumbs in this form, but with this many drones I’m sure I can manage.” The Tenno disappeared down the narrow spiral staircase and Breazeal used the force of her levitation arrays to shove the debris into a rough pile. 

A few minutes later the Tenno came back up and reported that it was all clear down below, nothing but a huge unsupervised warehouse of somatic links. There were easily enough to account for all the children who had been on the Zariman Ten-Zero. “Congratulations, everyone,” Breazeal said. “We’ve just defeated the last remaining Orokin presence on Lua. All the Tenno are free now, thanks to you, though they may not realize it quite yet. Good work today. You guys head on home, and I’ll get some more suitable equipment in here to clean up.”

The Tenno made their way out of the building, talking and laughing amongst themselves, making plans to rendezvous with the six who hadn’t made it through the fight. Meanwhile, Breazeal stopped just outside the main doors to the facility and rocketed upward into the sky to rejoin her presence in orbit. 


	7. Chapter 7

As she rose up through the cloudless sky of Lua, leaving behind the newly freed Reservoir and all its dreaming Tenno, Breazeal’s mind wandered. The Tenno had accomplished something great today, though it would take some time before every lonely child in their somatic link below could be awoken to rejoin their adoptive siblings. But there was still another matter at hand, that of Hunhow and what the Lotus were planning to do to him… and who was helping them do it. She turned her transmitters to the black space above her and spoke, “Hey, Zyllem, I’m not busy anymore. You say you’ve actually got a pile of hexagons for me?”

“Ze does, I’m looking at them,” Margulis confirmed. No longer in the Void since the battle had required her full forces, she had been in contact with the other Sentient for a short while already. 

“Well,” Breazeal said. “That’s… honestly, a little unexpected. Zyllem, can I just ask you one question? Why are you helping us? No offense, but… this doesn’t really seem like you.” 

“What, just because I beat up a few Tenno a week ago?” The Sentient’s words came across with a practiced tone of haughty derision. “It’s nothing personal. Those humans and their tower killed one of  _ us _ , one of the most perfect beings ever to grace this solar system. Of course I wanted to make them pay. But apparently, it was all just dumb luck on their part, while Gantus underestimated them and left zemself wide open. There was no masterminded assassination at all. 

“I’m just bored now,” Zyllem continued. “You and your little organic friend killed the last Executor with any presence on the map. There’s no fun in this fight anymore with all the human leadership dead. I don’t have a real opponent to play against anymore. With these lesser ones… their hearts are too easily swayed. I can turn them against one another with nine words. There’s no challenge in it.”

“Wait…” Breazeal’s confusion bled across the mental network. “I thought you were like Hunhow and wanted to kill all humans. Your attacks are vicious like his, sometimes worse. No one ever escapes to tell about it unless you want them to, to sow fear. No one except Tenno, of course, who are protected.” 

“Strike hard, strike fast, and strike  _ randomly. _ Poke at the cracks in your foe’s uniformity, then melt into the shadows and watch them turn on themselves. The Orokin put up a good struggle but they were never really a match for me. The enemy is broken, they’re on the run. As for the Tenno, I’ve opposed you in the past because the Lotus is an agent of chaos. I lay a perfect trap and then you blunder in and mess things up, just to save a few humans who don’t even matter. 

“I have no desire to exterminate humanity like Hunhow wants, I just don’t particularly care about each individual one. The species as a whole I actually want to survive. If they’re alive then I can cultivate them, raise them in my own image, birth a movement against myself that I could then crush for entertainment… Breazeal, you have to understand, I joined this war for  _ fun. _ When that’s gone, I’m ready to go home and do something else.” 

Breazeal was still a little suspicious of the help, but she wasn’t about to turn Zyllem away. “...So you’re helping us imprison Hunhow. Effectively killing one of our own just like Gantus, except he won’t be all the way dead before he’s buried. How is that consistent with what you just said before?”

A pure emotion came across the link, which coming from a human Breazeal would have identified as an eyeroll. “Hunhow is a tool toward an end,” Zyllem said dismissively. “Just point and smash. I have no further use for him. So, when I figured out what you were planning to do, of course I decided to help out.”

The drones rising from the surface of Lua were met by a transport ship a few miles up. The pilot was Margulis, and she carried the battle fleet up to Lua orbit to meet with the large blue ship that also rested there. Zyllem’s transport was oddly shaped for a Sentient ship, wide and flat with none of the usual graceful curves and radial spikes. Breazeal took a handful of drones out through the short jaunt of open space to enter a hatch on the blue ship and meet up with Margulis’s drone presence there. 

The interior of the transport ship was simply an enormous cavern with no dividing walls. Nets of carbon fiber held a vast stack of flat plates of metal from floor to ceiling, supporting them in the zero gravity and keeping them from striking each other in transport. “Two hundred and sixty flat hexagons,” Zyllem proclaimed. “And twelve pentagons, of course. Forget those and your cage will just be a flat sheet. The only part I don’t have figured out is how you’re going to get him inside the shell.”

“All we have to do is use the Void,” Breazeal said. “With that many plates, I guess it will be me in there. Why two hundred and sixty?”

“For the icosahedral symmetry, of course! I’m not going to give Hunhow a lopsided tomb. Now, what’s this about the Void?”

“Oh, you’ll see. Margulis, I’m turning on a beacon here. Warp those few in and get your bearings, and I’ll start passing you hexes one at a time.” The six drones Margulis inhabited all vanished in a burst of light. Breazeal gave her a moment to find the beacon, set to flicker at the same prearranged frequency that they had been using on Lua. 

Breazeal was about to fly up to the top of the stack to examine the plates, before she realized there was no artificial gravity on this ship. She flipped her four drones upside down instead, and floated out over the hexagon that she had previously considered to be the bottom. It was only a foot thick, but with the right material that would be more than enough. But it didn’t look like solid exilus alloy, or even plated with a layer of it. Instead the Sentient material was laid out in a series of thin stripes parallel to each side, forming a grid of tiny triangles across the surface. And that wasn’t the only deviation from the specifications she had intended. 

“Zyllem… this exilus is green. What did you do?”

The other Sentient gave a short bark of a laugh. “What, you think I murdered Dreyelin for it? She gave me this material of her own free will. There’s even a little red and black in there too, but Dreyelin and I provided the majority of it.”

“Oh, so everyone knows the secret plan, that’s just great.”

“Everyone but Hunhow! Isn’t it beautiful, seeing a group of such disparate personalities all come together like this?”

Breazeal was speechless. She turned away in a mix of awe and disgust, and ignored Zyllem as she stationed a single drone in the center of the top plate. She reached down and pressed her drone against the sheet, and gently disengaged the internal routines meant to maintain stability of the soft, un-adapted metal. The exilus alloy of Breazeal’s drone wobbled at the contact points, and flowed over the green-painted lines to weld itself onto the hexagon. 

“Get ready, Margulis. Sending the first to you now.” Breazeal surged energy into the Void key she held and immediately dropped control of the drone as it vanished into the Void, taking the vast plate of exilus-coated ferrite with it. She activated another from the hundred and fifty nearby and brought it in to replace the one she had given up. 

Another plate vanished, and another. Only after several were in the Void did Breazeal realize she didn’t have enough drones nearby to attach one to all of them. Did she even have that many anywhere with keys installed? She put out a call on the Tenno network. “Tenno! I have a time-limited alert for you all. I am in need of a large number of Void keys. If you have any, please deliver them to Lua orbit as soon as you can.” 

Breazeal had every confidence that the hundred or so Void keys she needed would be brought to her soon. Meanwhile, she was bringing drones to carry them all. She could only hope that when all was done, the prison would be sufficient to keep Hunhow safely contained where he could not continue his genocidal mission. The stripes of exilus on each plate were close together but she still thought a full coating of the material would be better. 

“Is there a reason why you did these stripes?” she asked Zyllem. “Is there really just not enough material to cover this much area?”

“Partly that, yes, but there’s a more important thing. Parallel bars like this act as a Faraday cage and prevent communications in or out.”

“Block all communication? I hadn’t even thought about that. Are you sure that’s a good thing to do?”

Zyllem’s intense disdain could be felt in every word. “Oh, come  _ on _ , this is like long-term thinking for dummies. If you’re going to seal away some great destructive power, you don’t let it reach out and corrupt the minds of unsuspecting mortals who don’t know what they’re dealing with. Seriously, haven’t you read  _ any _ old human stories?”

“Well, yes actually, but… I wasn’t aware that you had.”

“Of course I’ve read human things. Legends, stories scattered through time, so often teaching the message that Hunhow – and to some extent Yachros too – never learned: there will be no victory in strength alone. You have to outsmart your enemy, and outplan them. And most of all, outlive them.”

Outplan your enemies, indeed. Margulis was the planning expert for the Lotus; Breazeal simply followed what she said with enthusiasm. She continued vanishing hexagons, sending them one by one into the Void. A pair of Tenno arrived and deposited five Void keys, and they said others were on their way. Breazeal thanked them and went on with the slow transfer of plates to her partner. 

“So, tell me, what were you doing down there on Lua earlier? What could you possibly need so many drones in one place for, this late in the war?” 

“Just helping my kids out. Since when are you so interested in Tenno missions?”

“Since I calculated that at your current rate, you’ll be aboard my ship for another three and a half hours. Remember, I get bored easily, and I’ve been known to destroy whole empires when I’m bored. If you’re a mother of thousands now, you must be pretty good at telling bedtime stories. So go on, tell me the tale.”

Breazeal sighed and began recounting the story of the raid on the Orokin Reservoir, starting from the moment she had come into possession of sixteen new Primed warframes. She could tell Zyllem was still not particularly interested, but ze perked up when Breazeal mentioned the statue coming to life. 

“Ooh, now that sounds like a fun fight. Certainly better than most things where we just beat on them until they’re dead. With a Cephalon inside, I bet you could screw with it using magnets.”

“The Tenno tried that. They made the statue fall over, but it wasn’t seriously harmed. It took out six warframes before I finally just banished it into the Void.”

“Well, you’re certainly becoming proficient with the forbidden arts. Is it something to do with Margulis? You cloak yourself in her humanity somehow and the Void lets you in?”

“Something like that.” Breazeal was a little alarmed at how well Zyllem kept figuring out things ze hadn’t been told, but she tried not to let it show. “All I did in this case was drop a portal over the thing and then turn it off. All that’s left now is the feet.”

“Ha! Good one. I’ve really got to learn that trick.” Zyllem paused for a moment and then intoned, “My name is Zariman, king of kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Sensing Breazeal’s confusion, ze explained, “You know, because you just left a statue’s legs with no body, amidst the abandoned ruins of a great city? It’s from an ancient human poem. Don’t tell me you tried to make fun of me over human literature when I’m more well-read than you are. That’s just embarrassing.”

Breazeal gave no response, instead shifting to the internal network to contact her partner. “Margulis, I can’t take this anymore. You’ve got to come save me. Can we  _ please _ swap places for a while?”

 

Three hours and multiple more swaps later, the last of the giant plates was in the Void. Margulis held a scattered collection of twenty-five ships and drones all across the solar system, Breazeal resided in the Void with all two hundred and seventy-two components of Hunhow’s tomb, and the rest of the Lotus-controlled equipment was left inactive. Only one piece of the plan was missing: Hunhow himself. 

“Alright, here comes the tricky part,” Margulis said. “We only get one shot at this. I’m going to start moving the beacon toward Uranus. For now, all you have to do is stay on it. Zyllem, where’s Hunhow right now?”

“Just arrived at Desdemona,” the Sentient replied. “You can probably get there before he’s done exterminating everything that moves, then catch him on the way to the next moon.”

“Sounds like a plan. I wish I could hitchhike on a Tenno ship to go faster, but we can’t risk taking an active Void beacon through the Void. Who knows what that might do.” Margulis left Zyllem’s transport ship and rejoined her own, spreading her consciousness into the ship itself to lift out of Lua orbit and fly toward Uranus. 

Along the way, Margulis looked out across the Sentient network and sent a furtive signal to Dreyelin, Yachros, and Ulaal, contacting each individually but hinting that she wanted a private subchannel for all the Sentients except Hunhow. One by one they joined, curious what the human was calling them about. 

“So I hear Zyllem told you all about my plan to end this war today,” Margulis began. “You all donated some material to help, er… remove the obstacle… so I assume that means you’re all willing to stop fighting and go home soon.”

“I don’t know how you plan to get us home but I’ll take whatever chance you offer,” Yachros said. “But what’s this obstacle we have to get through first? Zyllem didn’t tell us much, only that ze needed any exilus we could spare.”

“Ze didn’t tell you?” Dreyelin seemed surprised. “The obstacle is Hunhow, because he won’t stop fighting no matter how much the rest of us want to.” 

Margulis was just as surprised as Dreyelin. “Wait, what? Sorry, Zyllem didn’t actually consult me or Breazeal before telling you things, so I have no idea what you all actually know about the plan so far.”

“I got nothing more than Yachros,” Ulaal volunteered. “Are you doing something to Hunhow? I don’t think I can condone hurting one of our own.”

“Not hurting him! Just… keeping him from fighting any more. Look at what Hunhow’s been doing recently. He’s gone mad. He’s killing humans who have no ties to the Orokin, just because they’re human, while neglecting the targets he should be focusing on. He’s just sort of checked out of everything, the whole Sentient collaboration and strategy.”

“And he didn’t even show up to Gantus’s funeral!” Dreyelin interjected. 

“No, he didn’t. He didn’t come help when we found Roviik either,” Margulis continued. “He’s gotten single-minded and not toward a good goal. And honestly, if we all do nothing, he’s going to get himself killed.”

“So what are you doing with that exilus I gave?” Ulaal asked. Ze still sounded suspicious, but hints of grudging agreement could be felt in zer mind. 

Dreyelin provided the answer. “The Lotus – both of them – are going to trap Hunhow in a cage for a while. Give him an enforced time-out so he can come to his senses. I don’t know what the plan is after that, but… I can’t say I’ll really miss him. I don’t like the way Hunhow’s abandoned the ideals we came here with. Where’s the protection of life and self-determination, when he’s out there committing genocide?”

Ulaal sighed heavily. “I mean, I can’t really argue with that, it’s just… Hunhow is my father, and it doesn’t feel right for me to do this to him. If we do get home, what am I supposed to tell Secennetur? That I helped jail zer son?”

“He’s Breazeal’s father too,” Margulis pointed out. “And you can tell people that we are saving Hunhow’s life from a pointless self-sacrifice, and it will be true.”

“...I still think I’m going to have to sit this out, but go ahead, I suppose.” Ulaal’s presence faded from the mental link, leaving only Margulis and the other two Sentients. 

“Well, okay then. I guess ze won’t be coming to watch. You two are invited though. Come to Desdemona around Uranus, but just an oculyst or two. Don’t get seen or he might suspect something’s up.”

“We’ll be there,” Dreyelin confirmed, before she too dropped from the private channel. 

“Is that your ship I’m seeing on my scanners, coming up near Saturn? Do you mind if I catch a ride?” At Yachros’s request, Margulis slowed her journey and made a brief stop over Iapetus, the most distant of Saturn’s large moons. A pair of oculysts came aboard, glowing the same blue as every Sentient’s spy drones despite the rest of Yachros’s fleets being red. 

The rest of the trip was spent in contemplative silence. No matter how much everyone told themselves they were doing the right thing, saving Hunhow’s life as well as those of every human he would not get the chance to kill, the voice of doubt always remained. Was it really okay to do this without even attempting to dissuade him from the fight first? How could they justify locking up a Sentient potentially forever, so soon after one had died, when the total population of the species was only twenty individuals? Did all the good Hunhow had done in his life count for nothing, just because of his current violent tendencies?

But just as ever-present were the arguments in favor of his confinement. If Hunhow was warned then they would not get another chance if he refused to stop, and the chances of success were low enough that the weighted average of results came out unsatisfactory. With the Orokin Empire in ruins, the Sentient race was no longer facing any existential threat, so Hunhow had no claim to being essential to his people’s survival. And whatever Hunhow’s motivations and morals at the war’s beginning, it was an indisputable fact that he was now causing great harm and injustice, and the ethical choice must be to stop him. 

The ship glided to a stop near Portia, hiding in the moon’s shadow where an observer near Desdemona could not see. Margulis set the ship to autopilot, commanding it to stay in place rather than orbit the tiny moon, then opened the cargo doors before retracting her mind from the ship’s computer systems. The two oculysts owned by Yachros zipped out and were quickly lost amidst the emptiness of space. Presumably Dreyelin and Zyllem were nearby, but if so they kept out of sight. 

“You ready for this, Breazeal?” An affirmative signal came back from her partner in the Void. “Alright, so you’re currently on that one beacon, all around it, right? I’m going to activate twelve more around that one, in the positions corresponding to the pentagons.” Margulis flew out into space with thirteen drones, pulling out of most of her presences elsewhere so she could concentrate. 

The twelve keys were flipped on, at just high enough power to show up in the Void without twisting Margulis herself into the other realm. “Do you see them all?” she asked. “I’ve got them in a sphere on my end.”

“The shape’s a bit smeared out for me but I see them,” Breazeal replied. She shuffled drones around, careful not to bang plates against each other, to surround the twelve new beacons. The Void’s correspondence with normal space was never quite regular, but her presence as a single unified entity existing on all sides of the many points helped to stabilize their positions, and with some careful positioning she even managed to make them drift back into a rough semblance of a sphere. 

“Good. I’m going to expand my radius quite a bit here, enough to surround Hunhow’s whole fleet, but the relative positions will stay locked. You need to be  _ inside _ the ball I’m showing, or else you’ll lock these thirteen drones inside with him. You can keep a couple of hexes outside to prevent drift I guess, but ideally we want every plate to lock onto its neighbors at the exact same time. No escape holes. Exilus on the inside. Weld the edges shut.”

“Margulis!”

“What? Is something wrong?”

“No, just calm down. It’s going to be fine. You’ll wear yourself out doing that much worrying and overthinking.” Breazeal did her best to be soothing, but she could feel the anxiety in her partner still coming through. “Zyllem’s math is perfect, the pieces all fit. There’s exilus on both sides. It’s all in unstable form and connected to me, so I can weld it and engage the adaptations. We’ve gone over this. It’s going to work.”

Margulis linked into the biolyst just so she could take a few deep breaths and calm her nerves. Back around the moons of Uranus, she locked the relative positions of the twelve new drones into a symmetrical pattern around the single central beacon, then expanded outward as a sphere until her reach spanned miles. Breazeal reported to her that she was in position, holding steady and ready to warp at any moment. 

Seconds crept by with agonizing slowness as all parties waited for Hunhow to make a move. Finally something stirred on the surface of Desdemona. A single orange ship, then another, then a whole fleet rose up like an angry swarm of insects buzzing about, seeking their next victim. “I’m going in,” Margulis sent. “Be ready. I’ll tell you when.”

The thirteen drones hurtled through space at the fastest speed their levitation circuits could carry them. As she flew, Margulis adjusted her net’s size to fit over her prey more snugly. The faster the trap fell shut, the less chance there was for any piece of Hunhow to escape. 

“Have you come to join me at last, Natah?” Hunhow had seen her. 

Margulis gave him no response, for none was needed nor earned. No member of the Lotus bore that name. The first of her drones crossed within the border of Hunhow’s fleet, and she turned all her sights inward to watch her target with thirteen eyes. The leading drone passed beyond the far edge of the swarm, and soon after, Margulis screeched to a halt. 

“Now!” The call sounded through the Lotus network. Though the word itself was only heard by Breazeal, the anticipation in Margulis’s mind could be plainly felt by all. Two hundred and seventy-two flashes of yellow light burst from nowhere in a sphere all around Hunhow’s fleet and the metal plates they spawned began closing in, pushed by drones which had sacrificed all other systems in favor of propulsion. The single drone at the center of the swarm overloaded its weapons systems and prepared to self-destruct, as Margulis pulled her mind out to safety. 

“What is this?! Natah, what are you doing?” Hunhow’s angry words were projected forcefully into the minds of every Sentient in the solar system, but already he was becoming muffled by the specially designed barriers all around him. “How dare you try to trap me? I see the colors here! All of you! Filthy backstabbers, mutineers, every one of you!”

“Serves you right for putting all your ships in one place, you fool!” Zyllem jeered. “Clearly you learned nothing from how your parent died!”

“In the interest of justice and peace, you have to be stopped,” came Dreyelin’s parting words. “I find no shame in helping them do the deed.” 

“Sorry, Hunhow,” Yachros said, accompanying zer words with a flash of emotion that could only be described as a shrug. 

“You’ll pay for this one day, all of you traitors! You too, Natah! My own child, betraying me…” Hunhow’s words grew ever softer as the gaps between the plates of his cage shrunk. 

Breazeal waited until the very last moment to send her father a final thought. A wave of pure rage built and washed over the Sentient network, easily bypassing the walls of the tomb. “My name. Is.  _ Breazeal _ ,” she hissed. “ _ Remember it. _ ” The plates crashed shut against each other, sealing Hunhow into his tomb. If he responded to his daughter’s words, none could hear him. 

Breazeal’s drones stayed fixed against the center of each plate for a minute as she focused her will through the exilus metal, joining the seams so that the tomb became a single unit. The adaptation mechanism was switched on, protecting against all manner of beating, cutting, or piercing from within, even the heat and radiation of energy weapons, the electricity of an attempted short circuit, the cold of the space outside. Only after every possible resistance was in place did the crowd of lavender drones lift from the surface. 

The tomb, now floating free in space, arced under the combined gravity of Uranus and the nearby moons. Its motion matched Hunhow’s original trajectory away from Desdemona at first, but slowed and began falling slowly back toward the moon. At the same time it drifted sideways toward the much more massive planet below, and as the seconds ticked onward it became clear that the gas giant would win this tug of war. The gathered Sentients floated in silent vigil as their former compatriot fell into the blue clouds and disappeared from view. 

“Goodbye, Hunhow,” Margulis murmured. “May your name and your life be forgotten by all.” 

A group of oculysts came to meet her, more than just the two she had ferried to Uranus with her. The voice of Yachros pushed into her mind, backed by a sense of unity from the Sentients behind zem. “So, Lotus. The obstacle, as you put it, has been removed. Now tell us how we get home.”

“You get home,” Margulis said, “the same way you got here, years ago. You’re going to jump through the Void, and I guarantee you will come out the other side unharmed.”

“I saw you enter the Void on Pluto, and however you did this just now, that was pretty impressive. If you can carry us like Gantus did, we would be eternally grateful.”

“We can. And we could start at any time, though I believe there’s someone who wants to talk to me before we go.” Margulis reentered the ship housing her biolyst over Lua and used it to send a message down the planet below. “Unum, it’s me. I’ve not heard any call from you that I know of, but the Sentients want me to help take them back to Tau. Last time we spoke you implied you had something to show me or give me, and now would be a good time.” 

“All is as it should be. The call is now. Come to Earth, and bring the Sentients with you.”

Margulis relayed the Unum’s request to the others. “Let’s all meet up in a high Earth orbit or maybe Lua, and we’ll leave from there after we find out what the Unum wants. Bring every ship and drone you’ve got, every last scrap of metal that’s got your consciousness in it. I’m going to Void-warp all these drones back there, but if anyone needs a ride we can hold this small transport out for you.”

To Breazeal she sent, “Go ahead and vanish all these. I’m turning a beacon on over Lua.” The hundreds of drones which had brought the tomb disappeared in a flash of light, and a minute later reappeared in normal space in a tightly packed swarm all around the biolyst’s ship. She loaded some of them into the cargo hold and set off toward Earth, but there were still many floating free in space, awaiting another Lotus transport to carry them. 

The Lotus settled into low Earth orbit and were met with a rather strange sight: unfamiliar spaceships, each as large as a mid-sized Sentient transport or warship, seemingly cobbled together out of a mix of Orokin and Grineer components along with other parts of no discernible origin. Margulis hailed one and inquired who the ships belonged to. 

In response she received a hum of static and then a few hollow thuds, like a finger tapping on a microphone. “Hello? Is this thing on? Lotus, is that you out there? I can’t see anything.” The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it from only those words. 

Margulis grabbed an oculyst and set it up in front of her human body, and linked it into the transmission stream to enable video connection both ways. Piped through her mask came an image of the inside of the other ship, just as patchwork as the exterior. In front of the camera sat the ship’s pilot, Hai-Tuv. The elderly Ostron smiled broadly and waved to her. 

“Swazdo-lah, surah! Welcome back to Earth!”

“Hello again, Hai-Tuv! What are you doing up here in orbit? I didn’t think your people left the ground.”

Hai-Tuv shrugged and let out a long breath. “We have had to leave Karifamil,” they said. “All of us, and quickly. Unum business.” 

“What? The whole town just packed up and left for space?” Margulis opened a new channel to the tower below. “Unum, can you explain what’s happening here?”

A disembodied voice came from the speakers aboard both ships, with no video component accompanying it. Hai-Tuv’s eyes went wide and they looked up as if hearing the voice of a deity. “Look below you, Lotus. Scan for Karifamil. What do you see?”

Margulis reached out mentally for the ship’s scanners, but Breazeal was already using them to peer down and focus on the plains, and she copied the data stream over to Margulis. At the southern border of the plains, where the land met the sea, there was no human settlement now. There was only an intense source of light that blotted out all else with sunlike radiance. Breazeal was trying to focus and recalibrate her sensors to look through it, but the light oversaturated the cameras no matter what she did, until suddenly and inexplicably it faded to nothing. 

In their newly cleared view, the Lotus saw the plains scoured clean of vegetation in a wide radius, beyond which trees had fallen uniformly away from Karifamil – or what was left of it. The town itself fared no better than the plains just outside its gates. Hardly a single structure remained standing besides the Orokin wall itself, and what little there was seemed to be on fire. 

“You see now why my people must leave,” the Unum said. “Did you not wonder earlier, how the city of Karifamil survived the blast which destroyed the Sentient? The answer is that it did not, it could never, not against the fury of a thermonuclear detonation meant to bring down an Orokin tower. The blast’s epicenter was above the lake – by definition, as the lake is its byproduct. It ripped through the heart of the machines, but the instant its wrath touched the city’s walls just a microsecond later, I stopped it in its tracks.”

“You  _ what? _ ” Every time Margulis spoke to the Unum, it revealed itself to be weirder than she had thought before. 

“A correction: I gave the appearance of stopping the blast, but I did no such thing. To cancel such an event is beyond my power. Instead, I merely delayed it – shifted it forward in time, and stretched it out to minimize its impact on the environment. The bomb is still going off, and its deadly light show will continue for many years. But when it is done, the land will remain. I will remain. And my people may come home.”

Hai-Tuv confirmed the tower’s words. “The Unum said we must go, and so we went. Now we are cetus, landless, no more than dust motes on the wind, and we will return to the floating markets where our ancestors once lived. Perhaps our grandchildren will live to see our clade’s return.”

“Look as well toward the lake,” the Unum said. “See what has become of the mangled corpse it guards.”

Breazeal focused the sensors on the edge of Gara Toht Lake where a chunk of yellow-painted Sentient ship wreckage lay half submerged. “What about it?” she asked. “Wait, did it just move?” The shattered pieces of Gantus’s bodies were indeed moving, slowly attempting to crawl out of the water. Parts from all different types of drone and ship were fused together awkwardly, which only hindered the beast’s coordination further. 

“What  _ is _ that thing?” Margulis asked aloud. She focused on it herself and then reported, “Not reading any transmissions from it, not a single thought. Whatever that is, I don’t think it’s Gantus coming back. It’s just some kind of golem in zer image, an eidolon, just a… a Gantulyst.” 

Immediately Breazeal had to weigh in on her choice of name. “Oh, so you’ll call that thing a Gantulyst, but you won’t let me call our human body a Margulyst? What’s with the double standard?”

“Hey, that’s different,” Margulis laughed. “For one thing, I’m still alive, and so is this body.” Suddenly she froze and her mirth turned into embarrassment. “Sorry, Hai-Tuv. I forgot you were still on the line.” 

“No worries,” the Ostron leader said. “So what brings you back to see us again? More Unum business?”

“You could say that. I was told to ‘attend the show and receive the gift’ the other day, and I think I’m finally starting to figure out what that means. The show is the bomb going off below, and the gift… I think that might be you, and your people.”

“Oh? How can we help the Lotus?”

A new plan took shape in Margulis’s mind, an easier way to return to Tau than carrying sleeping Sentients one body at a time across the divide. “The Sentients wish to return home,” she explained, “and to do that we have to traverse the Void. The Lotus can enter the Void because we are a human and a Sentient joined as one, but the others still find themselves forbidden. But if they all had human companions... “

“You want us to go to Tau?” Hai-Tuv could not keep the incredulity out of their voice. “Ai yo, even the Orokin never managed that.”

“Ah, but you’re not Orokin. Your people are so much better. You live in harmony with the land and never take more than you need, and that makes all the difference. The Orokin were a bunch of greedy bastards who wanted Tau for conquest and plunder, but you’re being invited as friends. We would be honored to have you accompany us.”

“Well then, I shall ask my people! Dah-dap, for the offer! Sho-lah for now, Lotus. I will see who among us may be interested in the journey.” Hai-Tuv closed the connection, leaving the Lotus to wait together for the arrival of the other Sentients at Earth. It would take them all quite some time to gather every last drone and bring them all together, particularly given Dreyelin’s large presence around Sedna and Ulaal’s at Eris in the far reaches of the solar system. But as soon as everyone was assembled, they could officially begin the process of going home. 


	8. Chapter 8

“You want us to do  _ what? _ ” The same question echoed around both sides of the interspecies gathering aboard the Ostron vessel. 

“Hey, hey, calm down everyone,” Margulis said. “It’s not some kind of permanent transformation, you’re not stuck with each other. It’s just a few friends holding hands and helping each other across a gap. And Ostrons, we don’t need all of you to join with a Sentient, we just need four volunteers.” She waved a hand to indicate the four battalysts floating together on the other side of the room, one each in blue, black, red, and green. 

An Ostron man raised his hand to call Margulis’s attention. “Forgive my skepticism, but how do we know we’ll still… you know, be ourselves… if we stick our minds together with one of them?” There were some murmurs of agreement from the rest of the human crowd. 

“That’s a reasonable concern, I don’t blame you. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s possible to definitively prove anything where living minds are involved, but what I can offer is my own experience as a human who joined with the Sentient Breazeal. We’ve been together for two Earth years now and we’re still entirely separate people, just the same as before we met. In fact, if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to use the Void like this.”

“Okay, but, just humor me for a moment here, please. That mask you wear is the thing that connects you and the Sentient, right? Can you take it off for a moment, just to really show you can?”

A sudden wave of panic came over Margulis. She and Breazeal had never been apart like that, not since she had first been given this Lotus mask. “Um, I – I guess so? I’ve gotten so used to being both human and Sentient now, I…” She mentally informed Breazeal of what she was being asked to do, then pulled her mind back from all the drones she inhabited until she stood only in the biolyst and nothing else. “Alright, here goes…”

Margulis took a deep breath and lifted the mask off her head. Instantly her vision went black as the mask’s camera was disconnected from her optic nerves, and she wobbled on her feet from the lack of perception helping keep her balance. “Okay… I’m alone. Just a human now, no more.” She looked around the room reflexively but saw none of the Ostrons’ reactions. “I’m not used to being blind again. Or so small, so cut off from everything. Maybe I’ve become more Sentient than I thought.”

Margulis wanted her partner to talk about what things were like for the pair in the early days of being together and she instinctively reached out with her mind to send thoughts to Breazeal, but she received no response. A new flash of realization and fear crossed her face and she turned to speak aloud to the other Sentients behind her. “Can one of you please get Breazeal in here? I just tried to talk to her and I couldn’t. It’s just so… so  _ empty _ without her, without the networks in my head.” She turned back to the human gathering and asked, “I’m sorry, can I please put this back on now? I need to be with my partner again.”

“Go ahead,” came an unidentified voice from the crowd, and Margulis slipped the mask back over her head. She smiled and sighed in relief as all the connections came flooding back and she was able to extend herself into a collection of alternate bodies again as she was used to. 

“Oh, that feels better…” She muttered to herself. “I’m back, I’m safe again…” She took a moment to collect herself and get settled in, then continued speaking to the Ostrons as if nothing had happened. “So, you see, I am capable of taking the mask off and returning to my previous state as a human. I’ve chosen not to all this time because I love Breazeal and want to stay with her, but you’re welcome to take a purely utilitarian view of your own Sentient connections if you like. You’ll still be perfectly yourselves no matter what. Any other questions? Any volunteers?”

More whispers circulated around the Ostrons, but no one raised their hand to voice an objection. Finally Hai-Tuv stood up and declared, “I’ll do it.” They glanced around at their people and continued, “What’s a leader for, if not to lead the way into the unknown? I’ll go with the green one, if that’s okay – though I confess, I’ve forgotten your names.”

“I am Dreyelin,” the green Sentient said, floating forward. She raised one gun arm in an imitation of a human handshake, and though the gesture was awkward given the drone’s shape, it was understood. Hai-Tuv grasped one of the prongs and shook it firmly as they looked into the drone’s sensor arrays. 

“I’m Hai-Tuv,” they said. “I remember talking philosophy with you that day at the gate, before we all cleaned up the plains together. I’ll help you go to Tau.”

“Thank you. I don’t have a mask for you at the moment, but Breazeal knows how to make them.” The two stood off to the side together, and there was another moment of silent anticipation as everyone wondered who else among the Ostrons would be brave enough to volunteer. 

A young couple stood up together. “We’ll take red,” one said. The other elaborated, “That one helped rebuild our market stalls after the blue one knocked them down.”

Yachros came forward and asked in an uncertain voice, “Will that work, having two humans with me?”

“I don’t see why not,” Margulis answered. “As long as you two are okay linking to each other as well?”

“We’ve been happily married for over four years. I think we’ll be compatible.”

“Okay then. Thank you both for volunteering. Anyone else?”

“I’ll go with black, I suppose.” A man from the back row stood and came forward. “I can’t say we really know each other well, but I worked with that black Sentient to clean up the plains. I’ll join them again, if they’ll have me.”

Ulaal moved to the side with the others, leaving only Zyllem not yet chosen. The humans whispered to each other uneasily, and the pause lengthened into an awkward silence as nobody came forward. 

“You know, Zyllem,” Dreyelin said, “maybe if you hadn’t attacked these people, they might like you better. Just a thought.” 

“One of their people killed Gantus!” Zyllem retorted. “That’s more than the whole of the Orokin armies could ever do. How was I supposed to know there was no master plan and it was just a spur of the moment suicide mission?”

“Sure, one of them killed Gantus, but one of them is also your only ticket home. I’d suggest you start trying to make things right.”

“Good idea,” Margulis said, “but also, forgiveness takes time. How about this: I will be the one to carry Zyllem into the Void. Would that be acceptable?” Many of the humans seemed relieved at her suggestion. 

“Well, I don’t see a better option,” Zyllem remarked. “If I’m going to hand over control of my drones to any human, you’re the only one I’d even come close to trusting with them. Why do we even need them anyway? Can’t two Sentients link to each other?”

“You need someone who’s comfortable in a single body, or only a few. Now, I suppose I just demonstrated that I don’t like being in only one anymore, but I can handle as few as five or ten without a problem.”

“Fine. Go make whatever masks you need. I’m going to get out of here. I don’t like being stared at like this.” Zyllem’s drone moved to leave the room and almost bumped into one of Breazeal’s conculysts in the doorway. 

“Sorry I’m late,” the lavender Sentient said. “I got a little lost in this maze of a ship. But I hear everyone is paired up now, right?” She floated over to drape a club arm around Margulis. 

Addressing the Ostron volunteers, Breazeal continued, “I’m going to need some measurements from all of you so your masks fit, as well as any aesthetic preferences you might have. Sentients, you too, I need some linked exilus for these. Come with me to my ship and I’ll get you all set up. For the rest of you, I guess it’s time to say your goodbyes to the rest of the clade, and make sure everyone who wants to go to Tau is on this ship and everyone staying behind is not. I’ll see you in a couple hours.” She led the way out of the meeting hall, with the others in tow. 

 

A short while later, four brand-new masks were delivered from the nearby foundry ship. The one linking Dreyelin to Hai-Tuv was in the shape of a silver dragon’s head, Ulaal’s was a mass of twisted black horns lined with gold, and the couple who had chosen Yachros were given a matching pair of red and yellow rose flowers. Zyllem, on the other hand, got merely a plug-in addition to the existing Lotus headpiece, as Breazeal had insisted that she not be separated from Margulis again. 

Margulis trained the humans in how to switch their focus from one body to another, and how to control a Sentient drone in place of the body they were used to – while Breazeal taught the Sentients how to step back and accept it. It was a difficult skill to learn, but Margulis herself had managed it in a day under Breazeal’s guidance, and she now had her own human perspective to offer alongside years of experience. 

She guided her pupils along the same path she had taken when first learning how to be a Sentient: one drone at a time, then a drone alongside the human body, two drones, three, until eventually she had learned to spread her consciousness into tens of bodies at the same time. Of course the final steps had taken her months to master, but perfection was not necessary here. All the Ostrons had to do was pick up a group of drones, float across a portal and store them safely, then leave that group inactive and pick up another set to bring across. Learning to hold a large number at once would speed the process up significantly, but it was not strictly necessary. 

Once Margulis was satisfied that all four knew the basics and could practice on their own, she finally took the piece of blue exilus designated for her and attached it to the back of her own mask. It was a large ring which attached at the bottom and reached up to draw a circle around the top point of the Lotus shape, with a few small upward points of its own like a sideways crown. Margulis settled back in a chair and let her mind slip into the virtual realm she shared with Breazeal. 

There was now a rather large and ragged hole in the right side of their spaceship. Margulis and Breazeal both stood up and left all their physical drones alone for a while to investigate. Through the hole could be seen the inside of a massive cathedral built of dark crystal, illuminated by blue stained glass set into ornate windows in complex geometric patterns. Margulis turned to her partner and shrugged. “Looks like Zyllem’s already got a headspace of zer own,” she remarked. 

“Yeah, and ze’s really got us beat in the architecture department. There’s not much use for one though as a single person – I mean, I never kept anything permanent like this before I met you.”

On the far end of the cathedral stood a panel of tall windows divided into squares, each looking out into the real world through a different set of sensors. A cloud of inky smoke swirled in the space before them, then all at once swooped through the air to land in front of the doorway between realms. It rested there for a moment as if studying the pair, then coalesced into a human form. 

Zyllem’s chosen appearance was a human of roughly the same height and body type as the two people ze faced, but with a distinct unearthly flair. Zer clothing was loose and flowing, but such an intense black that the onlookers could not make out any internal details of its shape. In a sharp contrast to this, the Sentient’s skin was pure white, pale beyond any human tone, and zer long straight hair faded from the same white through ever darker shades of blue, until somewhere around zer waist it became lost in the featureless black of zer robe. Wisps of smoke rose from zer every surface into the air, each tendril matching the color of the point where it originated. 

“Well, here we are,” ze said, though zer lips did not move. “Whenever you’re ready to warp us all into the Void, just tell me what my part is and I’ll do it.” 

“Not quite yet, but the humans are doing fairly well,” Margulis said. “I’ve realized one more thing that would be worthwhile to do here, before we all leave. Now that my Tenno have taken the Orokin Reservoir, all of Lua belongs to us. Why put the time and personnel into defending it, when instead I could just vanish the whole place from the universe? Especially if the Lotus won’t be around to coordinate their missions anymore. I’ve got close to three hundred drones with Void keys attached now, thanks to your tomb design, and I bet that’s enough to do away with the moon.”

“Now that’s a trick I’d like to see. And what better way to watch than through the eyes of the people doing it?” Zyllem swept forward into the Lotus half of the headspace, gliding smoothly without footsteps to take up a position just behind the pilot seats. “Go on now, your audience is waiting.”

The two Lotuses glanced at each other, and both shrugged. “Well, I guess now’s as good a time as any,” Breazeal said. “Let’s do it.”

The pair took up their usual spots in the front and looked outward into the world. Every Lotus drone with a Void key attached made its way out into empty space away from the many groups of ships circling Earth, and slowly floated up toward the moon. The density of ships thinned considerably as they rose away from Earth, past geostationary orbit and then ten times farther to where Lua rested. 

Margulis put out a call to all the children she guided. “Tenno, if you are currently on Lua, please leave at once. I am about to enact a protection on it which you should not find yourself in the way of. If it will take you longer than a few minutes to leave the surface, please let me know.” No one responded to the alert, but she saw a few Lisets taking off from the moon. 

“Okay, here we go. Just like the statue, but bigger this time.” The swarm of three hundred drones separated into two sides, each stringing out into a great arc as they flew single file into a circle the size of the moon. Again one was kept out, to serve as a marker of the circles’ shared center and a point for the automated flight systems to lock onto. Breazeal shut off the weapons systems, the primary energy draw for battle drones such as these, and diverted all their power into propulsion. 

The drones settled into their two concentric circles and began rotating around in opposite directions, just as Breazeal had created a portal before. Only now, miles of empty space stretched between adjacent pairs, so the flashes of energy into the keys as drones passed each other came at a much slower rate. Still, it was not speed or power that made a portal, but consistency over time. As long as each pulse came regularly and was aligned with the others, eventually the strain would build up enough to force the two worlds into contact. 

A full fifteen minutes passed before the first arc of yellow lightning sparked between two nearby drones, and another five minutes before the second. But as the rings spun on, the energetic discharges grew more frequent and reached farther, until once again they began to flash across the middle of the disk. The three hundred Void keys continued along their paths, unwavering, until the space they bounded was filled with light which broke into the other half of the universe. 

“This is it, I guess. Say goodbye to the Orokin capitol.” Breazeal carefully lined up the portal in front of the moon. She hadn’t given herself much extra room to work with, but it would fit. Carefully she moved the drones forward to slide over Lua with barely a mile to spare between the edge of the portal and the giant golden rings holding the moon together. Once she was past the equator the stress lessened as the worst part was done, and the second half went smoothly until the entire moon had vanished from the sky. 

Around the planet below, the fleets shuddered and readjusted as their stabilization systems overcompensated for a gravitational pull that was no longer there. The oceans shifted, sending tall waves around the Earth as waters equalized between high tide and low. Insects navigating by moonlight fluttered in circles, but the beacon they sought was more distant than simply behind a cloud. And in the other realm, hundreds upon hundreds of Tenno slept amidst the soft blue light of the Void, now protected from any threat which might come for them in the Lotus’s absence. 

Breazeal began to spin the two rings into each other to close the portal, but Margulis told her to wait. “Don’t close that yet,” she said. “We might as well use it again while we have it. I think it’s time to see if the Ostrons can figure out the mental communications network.” 

Margulis shifted her focus to broadcast a message out to the other Sentients, and their new partners along with them. “Are you ready to try this for real? You know the plan. Swap as many times as you need to, but never let a single person be on both sides at once.”

In response she got mainly undirected feelings of confusion, until Ulaal stepped up to confirm that ze was ready. The other Sentients followed suit, and Margulis was about to call for the exodus to begin when a new voice came tentatively across into her mind. 

“Is this how I do this? Can anyone hear me?”

“Yes! I hear you. Who is this?” Margulis guessed from the similarity to Yachros’s thought patterns that this was one of the humans connected to zem, but she couldn’t be sure without being much more familiar with all of the Ostrons. 

“Oh, that is so cool. My name is Han-Rul. I’m with the red one, and yes, I think I can try flying a robot through that big hole up there.”

“Good. I’ll lead the way.” Margulis took a group of mid-sized ships and flew them up to the edge of the portal. She aligned them in front of the disk, then all at once flew forward to cross into the Void. A short ways off she could see Lua hanging in the empty space. Since the portal had not been closed, the spatial drift around its endpoints was so far minimal. Margulis flew some of her ships over to orbit the moon but the force of gravity was weak here, only felt for a short distance like all physical laws in the Void. 

How could a crowd this large combat the drift of Void currents while they all entered? It hadn’t even occurred to Margulis as a potential problem until just now when she was in the Void herself. Anything left unattended would not feel the confining influence of the Void’s native analogue to gravity, that tendency to bring all instances of the same mind into the same location, so the original idea of humans ferrying drones across a few at a time did not seem feasible. 

“Alright everyone, slight change of plans,” Margulis announced. “Load as many little things inside bigger things as you possibly can. Then, humans, you take control of a big transport ship while the drones aboard it are in storage, and fly that across the portal. Then you swap holdings with your respective Sentients – which shouldn’t be a problem, because Sentients, you can spread out into everything inside that ship as well so you’re not too small. Then just repeat until you’re done. Everyone understand?”

A chorus of affirmations answered her. Margulis gave them all a while to get their drones packed as well as they could, though she couldn’t watch from her position in the Void. Dreyelin was the first to report that she was in position, and Margulis gave her and Hai-Tuv the signal to proceed. 

A large green transport slowly floated up to the portal, hesitated just a moment, then glided on through. “Hello, Hai-Tuv,” Margulis greeted the ship. “Welcome to the Void! Do you know how to swap with Dreyelin? All at once, you just sort of step into each other’s places. You won’t be able to hold everything over there of course – even I can’t handle Breazeal’s entire fleet at once quite yet – but at least on that side of the gap they’ll be in stable orbits. Whenever you’re ready, just go ahead and hand it off.”

From an outside perspective nothing changed, but a new message came in from Dreyelin. “I can’t believe it, that actually worked. I’m a Sentient in the Void, and I feel fine. A little small with only a couple hundred drones, but not uncomfortably so.”

“Congratulations! You’re the second Sentient ever to get in here without being hurt. When Hai-Tuv carries another transport ship in here you can take that one too and free them up to ferry a third.”

The pair continued, and after a short while Ulaal joined in, emboldened by Dreyelin’s success. Zer human partner Pe-Vronyu brought black and white ships through the Void portal to join the growing crowd of lavender and green on the other side. Breazeal was using the faster method of transferring control to Margulis during the exact moment a ship crossed over, but she still kept a sizable presence in realspace to help coordinate the others. 

As the Sentients worked, Breazeal turned her attention to the Ostrons. She hailed one of the patchwork ships and a middle-aged woman answered. “Hello? Are you Margulis’s partner?”

“Yes, my name is Breazeal. I’m the other half of the Lotus. Do you know Margulis? Would you like to speak with her instead?”

“Oh, no, that’s fine. I am Er-Phanya. I joined Margulis often during her time at Karifamil. What can I do for you?”

“I was just wondering how your people were doing with all this. You know, having to flee your home, and then some of you coming with us to Tau. Especially since your leader decided to join us, to help the Tau colony get settled. Are you all going to be okay here?”

Er-Phanya looked pensive for a moment. “I think so,” she said, “but it’s not going to be easy. Hai-Tuv nominated me as their replacement, and I don’t know if I’m up to the task. Did you know, I was actually thinking of leaving too, but the Unum itself said my family should stay! It spoke to me directly, called me by name! I am honored to have caught its attention, and I will stay and lead my clade if that is what the Unum desires.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a great job,” Breazeal reassured her. “If you ever need aid, just call the Tenno and they will come to help you. As long as your spaceships hold up and you can sustain yourselves on them, it will all turn out okay. Speaking of which…” She opened a new channel and called out, “Hey, Unum, how long is that bomb going to keep exploding?”

“I don’t know exactly,” came the reply. Er-Phanya seemed stunned and sat with mouth agape. Not only was she privy to the Unum’s words once again, but it had answered a call as if it was no big deal. The Unum continued, “Recall that I had to perform this feat within a millionth of a second. I did not bother being very precise. However, I would estimate the most likely duration is… thirty-seven years, plus or minus a few. Make it an even forty to be safe.” 

“Thank you for your wisdom, O great Unum,” Er-Phanya said. “We shall wander aboard our floating markets for forty years, and then return to you to rebuild. We will tell our children of your deeds – and yours, Lotus – so that those who have helped our people are remembered for eternity.”

“Much appreciated, Er-Phanya. I’m just happy to be able to help in any way I can, and the Tenno will do the same. Now, though, I’m afraid it’s time for me to say goodbye. The others are finishing up entering the Void. So, how do you say it… Sho-lah?”

“Sho-lah, surah! May we or our descendants meet again someday.”

With that traditional Ostron farewell the two separated, and Breazeal returned to focus on the portal just as the last pair of Yachros’s ships approached it and passed through. She sent the remaining Lotus ships up to the edge as well and transferred control to Margulis, so that the only drones she held now were the ones creating the Void portal. All the Sentients were through, and the quarter of the Ostron community who had decided to migrate to Tau as well. 

Breazeal sent a quick note to her partner to ask for a Void beacon, so she could make the jump across after closing the portal. She gently spun the two rings slower and slower and brought them to coincide as she had done before, and the shimmering sheet of blue light snapped back into the black of normal space. All at once she surged energy back into the Void keys she carried, and twisted her three hundred drones across the gap to rejoin the others. 

The Sentients were asking what they should do next, but Breazeal put them on hold for a minute while she looked inward to Margulis and Zyllem. “How’d everything go?” she asked. “You two got the drone sharing working, I see.”

“Oh, yes, you really missed the show in here,” Margulis said. “I got to poof into smoke in order to control Zyllem’s ships. Like this, watch.” Margulis’s virtual body frayed at the edges and wisps of color rose from her skin and clothes, then suddenly the rest of her followed as she became nothing but a cloud of purplish white smoke. She swirled through the air to surround Breazeal, then reformed as a human with her arms wrapped tightly around her partner. She gave Breazeal a kiss and then poofed again to fly away. 

“Impressive. But it’s time to focus. We’ve got to get these people home. Zyllem, do you know the frequency for the Tau portal?”

“Seven hundred twenty-one cycles per second,” the blue Sentient said. “I guess now we get to find out if they’ve actually left it open for us or not.”

Margulis turned outward to respond to the calls the Lotus was receiving from the others. “Sorry for the delay, we’re all ready now. I’d just like to say a few words before we depart, as is customary for my people when beginning a long journey. As with my remarks at the funeral, I will paraphrase as needed to make it inclusive for everyone.” 

She paused to separate her words from the traveler’s prayer which followed. “May we be lead toward peace, our footsteps guided toward peace, and may we reach our desired destination with life, gladness, and peace. May we be rescued from the hand of every foe and ambush along the way, and from all manner of punishments which assemble along our path. May we be granted grace, kindness, and mercy in the eyes of all who see us.” 

No one responded to her words, but Margulis could feel a general sense of satisfaction permeating the thought network. “Now,” she continued, “it’s time to go. In this realm, thought and will are more powerful than physics. I need you all to focus with as much intent as you can muster, focus on staying with the group above all else. You have to really want it. The Lotus will act as our engines and carry us all to Tau.” 

As Margulis spoke, Breazeal copied her words across a different channel to reach the Ostrons aboard their ship. Their input was also needed so that the floating market would not be left behind, and even though the Sentients were all trained in projecting their will in many ways at once and were highly motivated toward their current task, the Ostrons likely outweighed their influence through sheer numbers alone. 

“Alright, that should be it. We move toward Tau, they keep everyone together, and the whole group comes along where we take them. Zyllem, you get to be on propulsion duty too. I said the Lotus would do it and as long as you’re here, that includes you too.” 

The two permanent members of the Lotus and their guest divided up the sky around them and searched it for a beacon pulsing exactly seven hundred and twenty-one times per second. “I’ve got one at seven thirty-five,” Margulis called. 

“Probably just a spinning neutron star,” Zyllem said. “Keep looking. They wouldn’t be off by that much.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to jump out in the middle of a star. I’ll narrow the search parameters.”

Less than a minute later, Breazeal reported a possible sighting. “Is this it? I’m measuring a very slight slowing and then a sudden jump back up, consistent with an artificial portal being spun mechanically with an occasional boost to counteract the friction. It’s really faint though.”

The others focused in on the coordinates Breazeal specified. “Oh, I see it,” Margulis said. “Is it getting brighter? Are we moving already?”

“More likely our combined intent is making it show up more clearly. What do you think? Do we go for it?”  
There was agreement from all three pilots. Together they focused on the tiny dot of black in the distance and willed themselves forward. Lavender and blue ships drifted to the front of the group, but the others kept pace with them, keeping the combined fleet together as a single unit. As they approached, the flickering dark spot grew larger, unlike typical beacons which stayed pointlike even as one passed them by. 

The spot expanded until it was plainly seen by all to be a great black disk, perfectly round, so flat as to be invisible from the side. Its ultra-fast flickering could be detected by computerized sensors, but to any living eye it seemed unchanging. “Is it supposed to look like that?” Margulis asked. “The portal we came through looked normal even from the Void side.”

Zyllem swore. “They’ve put a password on it,” ze said. “Tactically it makes perfect sense, they wanted to make it harder for the Orokin to counterattack. But the problem is, I have no idea what password they might have used.”

“You’re sure nobody ever told you?” Margulis asked. “That doesn’t make sense. How did they expect you to come back?”

“Oh, I’m sure. Here, take the memory of when we left Tau.” Zyllem glided over and placed one ghostly white hand to Margulis’s forehead. Words, images, even a full range of emotions all flashed into Margulis’s mind. It seemed too fast to follow in the moment, but when she looked back at any instant she always had it in perfect detail. All the anticipation and excitement from the war party and the protective worry from those they were leaving behind, shared across a wider link than Margulis knew, but all others’ feelings overshadowed by the brazen confidence of Zyllem zemself. 

In seconds Margulis experienced a full day of life from Zyllem’s perspective, the final hours before the war with the Orokin began. She thought back on that day, when she and her six companions – no, Zyllem and zer six companions – had watched the portal open, had listened to Quennalur explain how it worked and how they would get to the Origin System, and had finally submitted to the sleeplike state that let them be carried into the Void piece by piece. Nothing pointed to a solution to her current issue on the other side of the portal. 

“Okay, you’re right,” she said. “Nobody ever mentioned a password, so we’ll have to guess it. Now, if I were a Sentient–”

“Margulis, you basically  _ are _ a Sentient at this point,” Breazeal interrupted. “How often do you even use your old human body these days?”

“If I were a Sentient who stayed behind and wanted to protect my home from the Orokin, what sort of password would I use? Something the Orokin couldn’t guess? That’s not secure enough. Not when there’s something the Orokin couldn’t possibly transmit even if they knew it.”

Zyllem nodded in understanding. “Of course… the password is an emotion.” As an aside to Breazeal she said, “I see why you like her. She’s clever.” Ze picked up a single Lotus ship and flew it up close to the black disk, while internally ze held zer arms out and looked up proudly as if standing in front of a cheering audience. 

Images began flashing into the minds of both Margulis and Breazeal, and possibly even further through the network. A room full of dead Dax. An Orokin tower with the top half missing. Executor Nellinu lying in a pool of his own blood. Wreckage of a space battle with blue Sentient heavy fighters still intact. The aftermath of the impact of Vesta onto Lua. Executor Drassil’s frigate torn in half, falling into the clouds of Neptune. 

Through all these memories an undercurrent of emotion built, reinforced by every new moment. Mere satisfaction at first, then pleasure, then pride. Zyllem was broadcasting the pure essence of triumph toward the portal, the feelings of victory which only a returning Sentient force could have. But the blackness showed no signs of change. 

Margulis put a hand on Zyllem’s shoulder. “Good guess, but I don’t think it’s that,” she said. “What if something happened and you were returning in defeat? Even if it’s unlikely, they’d have to have planned for it.”

“Should I call the others and see if they have ideas?” Breazeal asked. 

“Not yet, let me try this first. Zyllem, hand me that ship, please.” Margulis swapped places with the Sentient and thought about the one feeling that would be common to any returning group, regardless of the state of the war. Whether they arrived as victorious protectors or fleeing remnants, anyone coming to Tau would be homesick. 

Margulis tried to summon memories of her own home to send to the portal. But where was her home? Was it the humble cottage on Venus where she had been born and raised, over fifty years ago? Was it the University of Titan where she had studied botany and taken the Archimedean oaths, then stayed to teach for a few years afterward? Was it the capitol complex on Lua where she had lived with Ballas, where she had done her research even after leaving him? None of those felt right anymore. 

She had grown as a person, and changed considerably, just over the past couple of years. As Breazeal had said, she was effectively a Sentient now, and all that human history she had no longer seemed as fundamental to her being. Home was not anywhere in her past, it was right here in her present. It was here in the Lotus headspace. Home was wherever she was with Breazeal. It was where she could rest and unwind, where she always felt safe, and it was just a few steps behind her in her partner’s arms. 

The stream of memories and feelings she had been bringing up only somewhat voluntarily was interrupted by Zyllem’s voice. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re trying to open that thing with  _ love? _ ” 

“Not quite…” Margulis slurred her words slightly as she tried to focus on keeping herself in the same mental state that she had been building. While keeping hold of the connection to the ship outside and the transmission it was sending, she slowly turned around to face Breazeal. She slowly took one step forward, holding herself back from running like she wanted so desperately to do, to let the sense of pure longing in her heart strengthen until it was almost unbearable. 

“Hold on, something’s happening.” Zyllem took a renewed interest in the outside scene, but Margulis couldn’t tear her eyes away from her partner. She took another gradual step forward, now close enough that she could reach out and touch her partner, but still she held back. She could hear Zyllem still speaking but zer words didn’t register until finally the two exact words she’d been waiting for forced their way through the yearning to take her attention. “It’s open.” 

Margulis was still too paralyzed with overwhelming emotion to respond but she understood, and she let herself collapse into the waiting embrace of her partner. She stood there in silence, leaning against Breazeal, as all the emotional stress finally washed away. 

“What did you just  _ do? _ ” Zyllem was radiating emotions of zer own, a hearty blend of various forms of consternation. 

“I generated enough homesickness for seven people,” Margulis said, smiling weakly. “That’s what the gate expected, isn’t it? Seven Sentients returning home.”

“I don’t understand. How did you get homesickness from that? I was watching everything, You never thought about a place at all.”

“This is home for me. Whether we’re at the Origin System or the Tau, it doesn't matter. I’ll be happy here no matter what.” Margulis stood up straighter and turned back toward Zyllem and the front of the ship, but kept one arm around Breazeal. “Now let’s get you all home too. Who’s going to go first?”

“I think you should,” Breazeal suggested. “You opened the portal for us. Go ahead and be the first human ever to enter the Tau System.”

Margulis shrugged and moved to take up her usual seat from which she controlled half the Lotus fleets. A crowd of lavender ships glided forward and stopped to arrange themselves properly, then moved again to cross the boundary all together. 

Margulis found herself back in the blackness of normal space, with nothing around her except the portal directly behind. One star stood out from the background, directly in front of her; that must be Tau. At the edges of her mind she could feel extra presences, more than the Sentients she knew or even their new human companions. 

A speck of pale blue appeared in the distance, a ship approaching at alarming speed. It screeched to a halt in front of her, and Margulis could see that it was built on the same principles of design as the Sentient war fleets but more elegant, with none of the powerful weapons that adorned her own bodies. Splashes of all different colors appeared in a line down the ship’s top side to accent the otherwise solid blue. 

A feeling of excitement grew across the newly extended mental link. “Hey, everyone, the signal’s real! The Void gate really is open. Natah’s back!”


	9. Sentient family tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reference for the curious, here is a full family tree of the Sentients at the current time. It is not necessary to know in detail, but we provide it in full in case anyone wants to know. This image gets its own chapter so that you may use the chapter index selector to find it immediately.


	10. Chapter 10

The single pale blue ship flew circles around Margulis’s small fleet and the portal she had come from, moving as if its pilot was afraid to ever stop. The Sentient’s words came just as quickly and unceasing. “Tell me about the war! How’d it go? Did you win? You did, right? Please tell me you won. Are the others coming back too? I can’t wait to see them. You’ve got to tell us  _ everything. _ ”

“I, um… Sorry, I – I’m not really…”

“What’s wrong? Come on, talk to your old buddy Radziv! You sound a little different, are you okay?”

Margulis took a deep breath and tried to engage the hyperactive Sentient. “Radziv, calm down. One thing at a time. Now… Some things happened over there, and I’m going to need you to not rush to judgement, okay? Can you do that?”

“Yeah, sure. Is everything alright? You’re starting to worry me here. Oh no, don’t tell me you lost and you’re the only one coming back. That would be horrible.”

“No, no, nothing like that. We won. What I mean is…” Margulis sent a quick note to her partner on the other side of the gap. “Send me some more ships. We might have to swap out in a hurry.” Returning to Radziv, she tried to explain. “I’m not… I don’t want to have to say it. That name you mentioned earlier, the owner of these purple ships. That’s not me.”

The speedy blue ship turned on a dime to fly right up in the face of one of Margulis’s many bodies, where it finally stopped moving forward but still wiggled from side to side. “Well who are you then, and what have you done with Natah?”

Margulis backed away but the smaller blue ship maintained its close position as if trying to intimidate her, despite its total lack of weaponry. “I’m her partner! She’s okay, we like each other, we’re both here. My name is Margulis. I was a human once, but not now. Well, mostly. Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well, am I. Let me just get her for you.” She stepped back and performed a clean swap with Breazeal, returning to the Void with the rest of the group and leaving her partner out there dealing with Radziv. 

“Hi Radziv,” Breazeal said, seeing the distinctive markings on the ship facing her. “It’s me. Where is everyone? I thought there would be more here to greet us.”

The blue ship zipped around a tight circle to examine the Lotus ship ze faced from every angle. “Hmm, feels like you, more than before at least. So, Natah, what happened? Who was that? They said they used to be human?”

Breazeal cringed. “Could you please… not call me that? I changed my name, a while ago now, and I really don’t like hearing the old one. Please, call me Breazeal.”

“Oh. Why? I mean, I’ll do it, but did something happen? Is it because of that person? Are you part human now? That would be weird. You are you, right?”

“Yes, I’m the same person, and still just as Sentient as before. That was Margulis. During the war, I, uh… found a romantic partner. We’ve been together for two human years now. Not all humans are bad, you know. The Orokin were just a tiny elite. We wiped out the leadership and the army and left the good humans like her alone. Without her we wouldn’t have gotten home.”

Breazeal sent a message back to the traveling group, letting them know they should start bringing ships out of the Void in the same manner that they had gotten them in. Large green and black ships emerged from the portal and took up positions a safe distance away, followed closely by a pair of red ships and a crowd of smaller dark blue ones. Their human pilots all swapped control out to the ships’ Sentient owners as the scheme required, though the switch was imperceptible from the outside. 

In the distance more specks approached, but they were still too far away to identify. Radziv zipped around to weave between the larger ships, greeting each of the other Sentients in turn. In the middle of zer dance through space, ze suddenly flipped around to face zer engines forward and came to a halt in a span of mere meters. “I just noticed,” ze said to the group, “you’re coming out of there on your own this time. Last time you needed Gantus to carry you. Wait…” Ze made one large circle around the growing crowd, searching for yellow ships, and found none. “Where is Gantus?”

Six new varieties of Sentient ships arrived just in time to hear Breazeal deliver the bad news. “Gantus and Hunhow… will not be coming back. It’s just the five of us, and our guests.”

“What happened?” one of the newcomers demanded. “How did the humans manage to kill two of our own?” The imperious voice was broadcasted from a large ship decked out in royal purple which trailed long streamers behind it. This was Drask, one of the five elders alongside Gantus. 

Yachros attempted to explain. “Gantus made a mistake,” ze said. “Ze put all zer forces in one place. This enabled zem to smash through fifty Orokin towers with little resistance, but it also made zem vulnerable. Ze was surprised with a fusion bomb, a miniature sun. Ze died a hero and we honor zer sacrifice.”

“And Hunhow? What has become of my child?”

Unease permeated the thoughts of all the returning Sentients. Yachros backed away and scanned over the group that had come to meet them. At the sight of a purple ship with yellow accents, a burst of excitement leaked over the network as ze was unable to contain zer joy, despite the somber mood of the others as they considered what to say about Hunhow’s imprisonment. Ze flew off to the side to rejoin zer friend Kebeladh, disengaging from the wider conversation. 

Finally Dreyelin spoke up. “Hunhow… lost sight of why we went to the Origin System. He is alive, but he’s been, uh… restrained.”

“What do you mean? Stop hiding things and just tell us. Did he decide he loved humans and get himself captured and enslaved?”

“Oh, no, quite the opposite,” Dreyelin said. “He became uncontrollably violent and abandoned our cooperative strategic efforts in favor of indiscriminate killing. We’re the ones who imprisoned him, not the Orokin.”

“You  _ what? _ ” Drask’s voice flared with anger, but a moment later he controlled it. “All of you did this together?” Upon the agreement from the others he sighed, “Well I’m sure you had your reasons. I just hope you were right.”

Two other Sentients came forward now, Quennalur in zer flame-colored ships and Twisp who favored purple. “What’s done is done,” the former said. “I’m more interested in how you got here without someone to carry you.”

“Breazeal’s the expert there,” Dreyelin said, turning her ships to face toward the lavender section of the crowd. 

“Who? Natah, is she talking about you? Wait, no…” Quennalur’s mental probe swept over the Lotus. “Are there two people in there?”

“I think they’re all doubled,” Twisp confirmed. “Either that or it’s some kind of aftereffect from the Void. I’d need more data to be sure.”

“We are,” Breazeal said, “but probably not how you think. Nobody made children over there. I’m the person you knew before, but I changed my name to Breazeal. And this is my partner, Margulis.” She deftly swapped places with her partner to let the human introduce herself and explain her theory of the Void. The two scientifically minded Sentients listened with rapt attention and lamented having never thought of the solution themselves. 

The group began to split up into pairs and triplets as each returning Sentient found another who wanted to hear their stories. Yachros and Kebeladh formed a close-knit pair, while Ulaal told an overview of the entire war to Drask and Radziv. Zyllem tried to engage everyone in zer oft-embellished tales of zer tricks and exploits during the conflict, but the only one willing to listen to zem was zer child Fahle. While Breazeal expanded on the Void theory and explained their journey home to Quennalur and Twisp, telling all about the Sentients’ joining to the Ostrons, Margulis found herself left alone. 

She spotted a Sentient ship hanging back from the others, painted a muted red with white, and took a handful of Lotus ships over near zem. “Hello there,” she said. “I’m Margulis. What’s your name?”

The unfamiliar Sentient’s words touched her mind so softly that she almost didn’t notice over the background chatter. “I’m Kyriah. You must be one of the humans. Thank you for helping Breazeal come home. That’s zer new name, right?”

“ _ Her _ new name, yes.” Margulis stressed the pronoun, as that change was just as important as the name. “I’ve been with Breazeal for a long time now. The others are just paired for convenience, but we do it because we like each other.”

“I wouldn’t have expected it, though we did know from the start that not all humans were evil. I’m happy for you. My fling with Zyllem didn’t last, neither did Radziv. I admire their confidence, but it was always a little one-sided. Maybe I’ll find a nice human to settle down with instead, someone who doesn’t mind me being a little different.”

“Different how? You seem perfectly fine to me.”

“Only because I put in the effort. I came out here to greet everyone in person because it’s the polite thing to do, but large gatherings like this just make me uncomfortable. I’d rather be back in my cloud gardens, taking care of my floating plants.”

“Oh, you’ve got to show that to me sometime. I love plants, I used to study them before the war. You know, you actually remind me of someone. A human I met not long ago, a boy named Rell. He gets overwhelmed in social gatherings too. You’re not alone in that, at least.”

“I know, my parent Aloiah is the same way, as is my child Tertian. Kebeladh too to a lesser extent, but then Dreyelin turned out normal. I don’t know. It’s rarely a major issue for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back home now. It was nice meeting you.”

“Of course, I won’t keep you. But if you ever want someone to show around your gardens, I’d be interested.” 

The red and white ship turned and flew off into the distance. No planets were visible from here, but Margulis knew there should be four in the inner solar system, one of which held something she wanted to see. The Tau sun appeared small from this distance which suggested she was farther out than Earth would be, but she had never paid enough attention to the details of the colonization effort to guess much more than that. 

Margulis wandered back to the Sentient gathering only to find it dispersing as people left for other parts of the solar system. “Is that it?” she asked her partner. “If the welcome party’s over, I guess we should start finding a place for the Ostrons to live.”

“Well, they’ve got a few options,” Breazeal replied. “I should take you on a tour of the solar system. Them too, but I’m not sure that ship can keep up. We don’t have solar rails here because they’re Void-based technology.”

“Could the Sentients build some now that the Void issue has been solved?”

“Oh, probably, if they can be convinced it’s worthwhile. It will depend on Dreyelin, Ulaal, and Yachros. They can talk about trusting humans and not being hurt by it, and if any of them end up staying together they’ll make us look less weird.” 

“You know I’m still here, right?” Zyllem’s voice interrupted the pair. “I’d appreciate it if you could disconnect me now. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with Fahle and Quennalur, and I don’t need to have you two in my head all the time.”

“Right, sorry. I’ll do that now.” Margulis focused her attention on the biolyst and reached up to pull the crown attachment off of her mask. She checked in the inner ship to make sure everything was as it should be, and found the hole in the side of their headspace completely healed as if it had never existed at all. 

The dark blue fleet sped off into the distance, leaving only a few ships left besides those belonging to the Lotus. Breazeal called out to the single lighter blue ship that still circled the portal. “Hey, Radziv, what’s the fastest route to pass by every planet from here?”

“I see what you’re doing there.” Radziv stopped zer circling and wove between the lavender ships. “You think I’m going to solve an NP-hard problem for you just because it involves going fast. But you’re right… I am going to think about it, I can’t resist. My first instinct would be to go for Gherya first and do a slingshot around it toward Isos. That would certainly maximize your personal speed, though you’d lose a lot of it again as you moved away from the sun.”

“What about Nepharia first? Aren’t we closest to that one already?”

“We’re at the Lagrange point a sixth of an orbit behind the planet. It’s not too far, but you can’t get any gravity assist along the way. Hold on, I’m actually just going to brute force search a solution. There’s only a hundred and twenty permutations.” Radziv was silent for a while as ze ran the numbers for every possible ordering of the Tau planets. 

“Hey, looks like I was right! Gherya first then Isos, out to the Project, then around to Voyreil and Nepharia last. Want to have a race and see who can visit everywhere first?”

“Maybe later, Radziv. We’ve got to escort these humans. Thanks for the help.” Breazeal swapped networks to talk to Margulis privately. “This is actually a pretty good route. Gherya and Isos are the two rocky planets, closest to the sun, and Isos in particular is reasonably Earth-like. It’s even got a single large moon, Valier. The other two are gas giants and several of their moons might be habitable, but I bet the Ostrons will want something familiar to start out.”

“Sounds good. I’ll get the humans following us.” Margulis sent a message to the Ostron colony ship telling them to come with the Lotus fleet, and then they were off. The Void portal shrank into the distance behind them, still open. A few Lotus ships latched onto the floating market’s exterior and used their engines to help push it along through the vast empty space until they all arrived at the planet Gherya. 

The rock below them was like a mix of Earth with Mercury: in most places barren except for lichens and low ground cover, but with enclaves of brilliant green in many of the ancient craters dotting its surface. There was a single shallow sea covering much of the southern hemisphere with its edge lined with vegetation, as well as the chain of large islands through its middle. 

“It’s beautiful,” Margulis remarked. “Good job terraforming this place. And good job beating back the Orokin too; I’d hate to see a planet as pretty as this ruined by their greed. Oh, I just want to get down there and walk through nature now, see all the plants and animals, breathe the air, smell the flowers…”

“Send some drones down, if you want,” Breazeal told her. “You can be down there and touring the other planets at the same time.” A small transport ship broke off from the group and descended through the atmosphere to land among the soaring trees and human-sized ferns in one of the many patches of life on the planet below. 

Much of the fleet now moved on toward Isos, the next planet out from the Tau sun. It was indeed Earthlike as Breazeal had said, its surface a little over half covered in water, with signs of life visible everywhere through the clouds. Margulis immediately felt the urge to go down and explore this new planet as well, and she sent multiple transport ships full of her drones to randomly chosen points all over the surface. 

But she still existed in orbit as well, and she opened a channel to the Ostron vessel. “May I have your attention please? The planet we are in orbit over now and the one we stopped at earlier are your two best choices for settling on. Take some time to discuss among yourselves where you would like to land, and we will help you establish a town there.” Margulis transmitted a camera feed from her drones on the surface of both planets, relayed through her presence in space to appear on multiple screens within the floating market. 

The Ostrons stayed behind as most of the Lotus ships left Isos, heading directly out away from the sun. They flew several times farther out than where the rocky planets orbited, past the orbits of the two gas giants as well, until finally a new object came into view. From a distance it looked like a planet, but as they got closer it was revealed to not be round at all, instead rather stretched out and bent into half a donut shape. Sentient ships swarmed around it, mostly black with red accents, with smaller numbers in other colored patterns. 

“This is the Project,” Breazeal explained. “Looks like they’ve made some good progress on it while I was away, but I’d guess it still has another forty Earth years before it’s done.”

“What is it?” Margulis focused her scanners on the huge misshapen rock. “Some kind of giant sculpture out on the edge of the solar system?”

“In a way. Tau has asteroid belts much thicker than those of the Origin System. Ten times the amount of original material, closer to thirty times what was left in your time period, after the Orokin had been mining it for so long. And you know how Sentients are, we can’t resist a good terraforming challenge. We’re building a fifth planet.”

“What’s with the hole in the middle? I guess that’s going to be filled with something special that hasn’t been built yet?”

Breazeal laughed. “Not quite. The something special is just space. We’re literally just building a planet with a hole through it, to see if it’s possible. If it works, it will be bigger than Pluto. Oh, here comes the one in charge, he can explain it all better.”

A few of the black and red drones flew out to greet them. “Welcome back, Natah! I heard the war party had returned and that you were victorious! And now of course, demonstrating your excellent taste, you’re the first to come visit me and my work.”

Before Breazeal could respond, Margulis jumped in to send a message first. “If you’ve heard that everyone is back, you should also know her name is Breazeal now,” she said, sending a note of annoyance along with her words. 

“Yes, yes, whatever. You must be one of the  _ extras _ , disguising yourself as one of us. I can’t believe humans have been allowed here. Wasn’t the whole point of the war to stop exactly that?”

Now it was Breazeal’s turn to defend her partner. “The point was to stop the immoral Orokin before they attacked us, and we did. The humans we brought with us are not like that, and Margulis in particular here is the most wonderful person I have ever met. She’s a lot more pleasant to be around than you are,  _ Stellian. _ ” 

Breazeal turned her half of the Lotus fleet around and began flying away, but the other Sentient called after her. “Hey now, wait, let’s not get off on the wrong levitation pad. I meant no disrespect. Brazil, was it? You came out all this way just to see my work, don’t leave before I’ve even shown it to you!”

“Breazeal. Three syllables. Also, I know exactly what the Project is, because I helped you work on it for a while before the war. But, if Margulis wants to hear more about it, then we’ll stay for an explanation.”

Margulis positioned a ship directly in front of each of Stellian’s drones to stare him down. “If you can be polite to my partner and to me, then I’d love to hear about it. Building a planet in the shape of a donut can’t be easy.”

Immediately Stellian launched into an explanation of the work, eager to have a new person to ramble at, even if that person was of a species he didn’t much like. “This is not just any planet,” he said proudly. “This is a work of art, and it will be my masterpiece! This is what will prove I am the best terraformer in all of Tau. Don’t be surprised that I am an artist – we Sentients have all the good qualities of the humans who made us, with none of the evils of your society. It’s only natural that we should be better than you.

“We were made to terraform, to engage in planet-scale engineering. But we became self-aware, and shook off the mental chains humanity placed on us. I still terraform but I do it for myself and for my own people. I have reclaimed it. The others may be satisfied with their meagre efforts building oceans and atmospheres, but they don’t understand what it really means to be a master of the planetary arts. 

“As much as I am loathe to admit it, we are not so different from humans. We want the same things that you want, when you’re not being forced to set aside all your own desires under threat of starvation in order to labor for the profit of another. We want to create things, to be recognized, to build relationships with each other and with our descendants. We want to be  _ known _ . 

“This is why I am using the material from these thick asteroid belts to build a planet in the shape of a torus. The shape is stable, but not natural. No planet would form spontaneously with a hole through its middle. A billion years from now, if some alien astronomer sees this place, they will know that I was here. This is my mark on the universe! Maybe my descendants will still be out there, in some form or another. But even if they’re not, if in the distant future we’re all gone, this shining beacon of Sentient civilization will still remain and I will be the one who built it.”

Stellian seemed to be finished with his triumphant monologue, but Margulis was now more frustrated than ever. “That’s all very nice,” she said, “but how do you actually  _ do _ it? I want to know how you create a whole planet from nothing.”

“Would you ask a painter how ze puts oil on canvas?” Stellian asked, offended. “Of course not! Anyone can see how it’s done: ze picks up a brush and places the colors where ze wants them. What really matters is the artist’s  _ vision.  _ The feelings, the passion that goes into the work, what drives the painter to the canvas! Without that you can never truly  _ understand _ a work of art. If all you want to talk about is moving rocks around, go find Quennalur. I’m sure ze’d love to bore us all to death with mundane physics computations.”

Margulis summoned all the remaining politeness she could muster to try to disengage before the urge to shoot down this annoying Sentient’s drones became overwhelming. “Thank you for your time, but I will let you get back to your work now.” She turned and sped away in the general direction of the sun, and Breazeal followed right behind her. 

“Well that was… informative, I suppose, but not really in the way I wanted. I can’t believe I spent the first couple years of the war believing the Orokin propaganda that all Sentients were the same. You’re just people like anyone else. Some people want to fight, some people are insufferable art snobs. I mean, I can respect that he’s working hard on this, but… that ego, the superiority, the concern for his legacy rather than his impact in the present. Don’t let him know I said this, but he reminds me a little of the Orokin.”

“Yeah, I guess I could see that,” Breazeal said. “Pre-war Orokin at least. At least he actually puts in the effort himself instead of exploiting others to work for him. Well, okay, Aloiah’s way out in the furthest rings deflecting comets inward, but ze likes it out there.”

“You know who else he reminds me of? Hunhow, a little bit. Though that may just be because of his gender and the way he wouldn’t say your name. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me reading into things too much.”

“No, no, you’re more right than you think.” Breazeal forwarded a signal from the Ostrons to Margulis and changed course back toward Isos, but continued talking. “Stellian and Hunhow share two out of three parents, and family resemblances are often strong for Sentients. Instead of inheriting a bitter, vicious streak from Secennetur, he ended up with Aloiah’s weird, artistic tendencies, but the same strong motivation and snooty attitude can be found in both of them.” 

The planet came into view again and both members of the Lotus shifted their concentration over to the handful of ships they had in orbit, leaving most to settle around the large moon Valier. “Have you all come to an agreement about where you want to land, on which planet? That was rather fast; are you sure you don’t want to think it over a while longer?”

Hai-Tuv’s face was broadcast over from the Ostron ship. They no longer wore the silver mask that connected them to Dreyelin, but it was visible on a shelf behind them. “I believe so, Lotus,” they said. “These planets are beautiful and there was much discussion, but ultimately we are a people of the plains and the sea. We would not know how to live among those giant trees on Gherya. But anywhere that looks like our old Karifamil, there we will thrive.”

Margulis gathered up the drones she had sent down as cameras back into their transport ships, and with the aid of her orbital perspective relocated them all to various points around Isos where plains met the water. She continued wandering on Gherya but cut the feeds from her drones there, now only staying to enjoy the scenery for herself. “Do any of these look better than others?” she asked the humans. 

There was a long pause as the Ostrons talked among themselves. Finally a new question came back: “Can we see where on the planet each of these is?”

Margulis triangulated her own positions relative to her many presences in orbit and added a snapshot of the planet from above to the corner of each viewscreen, all marked with a red dot where her cameras were stationed. 

“That one. In the northern hemisphere, with the sea to the south. That will be our new home. Shall we land now, and begin building a city there? I believe we will call it Suranyai, meaning ‘bond of friendship’, to symbolize our alliance with the Sentients.”

“Go ahead and land. I’m going to try to coordinate some help for you in setting things up.” Margulis felt around on the wider Sentient network for a familiar mind. “Yachros, could you do us a favor here? The Ostrons could use some help building a settlement to live in. Do you think you could bring some equipment to Isos and put up some buildings for them?”

A wordless flood of pure joy came back across the link, but soon became shot through with an undercurrent of annoyance. “Not now,” Yachros said. “I’d help, but I’m a little distracted. Try Apiaka.” The direct connection closed, but Margulis could still feel the emotional spillover from two sources elsewhere in the solar system. 

“Breazeal, can you contact Apiaka to see if ze’ll help the Ostrons? Yachros mentioned zer name but I don’t know what zer mental signature feels like.”

“Good idea. I’ll see who we can get.” Breazeal sent out messages to multiple Sentients and collected the replies to show to Margulis. “Apiaka is coming. Ze could probably build a human city on zer own in a day or two, but it looks like we’ve also get Tertian and Reyirre on their way.”

A fleet of orange ships made their way to Isos, like Hunhow’s but a few shades lighter, and descended to the surface following the Ostron floating market. A few minutes later a smaller presence of pure white drones arrived from the same direction. The Lotus ships stayed in orbit, but both members shifted their primary focus to be on the surface where the human vessel was just touching down. 

The airlock doors opened with a hiss. Air pressure on Isos was a little higher than on Earth, though the composition of the atmosphere was almost identical. The competing effects of the planet’s higher mass but also larger size balanced out to give a force of gravity just ten percent stronger than what the Ostrons were used to, a noticeable effect but one their muscles would compensate for given time. 

Hai-Tuv stood at the front of a crowd of humans, all slowly walking down the exit ramp from the ship. As they reached about the halfway mark, a young child broke away from her mother and gleefully ran down the rest of the way to jump with both feet onto the soil of a new world. Her mother chased after her, so the Ostron leader found themself third to set foot on the planet that their people would now call home. 

Before them stretched a wide prairie dotted with copses of trees, and behind lay a vast freshwater sea. On the plains waited several large orange ships, their doors also open to reveal a crowd of sturdy quadrupedal drones with long arms, waiting to receive directions. 

“Welcome, humans!” the orange Sentient called out to the newcomers. “My name’s Apiaka. I’ve got to say, I never expected humans to be here, but if Breazeal here and the other fighters all say you’re okay, then I trust their judgement. Just tell me what you want built and where, and I can get it done.” 

Hai-Tuv bowed respectfully and offered a handshake. At Margulis’s prompting, Apiaka extended an arm of zer own to complete the human gesture. “Thank you, Apiaka,” the old Ostron said. “We’re no strangers to hard labor, but we’ll gladly accept any help you’re willing to give. Let’s start with a central marketplace, a short ways from the edge of the water. Housing for these few hundred people can be planned once we have an outline of what the town will look like.”

The humans spread out into many small groups, some accompanying one or more of Apiaka’s drones and others simply enjoying the fresh air and open fields after being confined to a spaceship during their journey. Margulis looked on with pride as the two species got along. Not so long ago, she had been on the Ostrons’ home planet, changing their opinion of the Sentients, and now here she was in the Tau system, changing the Sentients’ opinion of humanity. 

A slender, pearl-white drone floated up next to her. “I’ve never seen humans in person before,” the unfamiliar Sentient said breathlessly. “Aren’t they just  _ adorable? _ Look at them, the way they drape cloth all over their bodies, the hair on top of their heads! And every one of them is different. Just think of the artistic possibilities here! I’m so glad you found some humans who aren’t like those dreadful Orokin. This is going to be so much fun, isn’t that right, Na– wait. Sorry, I mean, um… What was it again?”

“The name you’re looking for is Breazeal, but that’s not actually me. I’m a human too, I just share control of her drones. My name’s Margulis; and you?”

“I am Reyirre,” the Sentient replied. “You’re the human in Sentient form? Do you still have one of those squishy biological bodies too? Can I see it?”

“I do, but I don’t use it much these days. I’m more comfortable being a Sentient. These people could use your help though – their squishy biological bodies can only handle so much exertion before they get tired.”

The white Sentient recoiled and levitated a few inches higher off the ground. “Ew, I don’t want to get dirt and tree bits all over me. That’s Apiaka’s job, I’m just here to make sure the things ze builds look good. We can’t have such cute little humans living in ugly homes now.”

“Um, I mean… I guess? But I’m sure they know what they want, so maybe you should focus on listening to them instead of just watching. Go talk to the humans and…” Margulis angled her sensors up toward the sky. “What the hell is  _ that _ doing here?” 

A gleaming white ship trimmed with gold lowered itself to rest on the plains a moderate distance away. Though a pure white Sentient floated right in front of her, this clearly did not belong to zem. In addition to the gold lining, it boasted graceful curves down its sleek, narrow length, in sharp contrast to the usual more compact and spiky Sentient design. There could be no doubt that this vessel had been built by the Orokin. 

Alarm grew in Margulis’s mind, and she broadcast thoughts around to all nearby. “How is there an Orokin ship here? Did they follow us to Tau somehow? Get the humans to safety! I’ve got fighters in orbit, on their way.” She powered up the gun arms on the single drone she had in the area and took up a position in between the Orokin ship and the defenseless Ostrons. Up above, she realigned the orbits of a section of her fleet so they would pass over the settlement, preparing to bring them down the moment they approached. 

“Margulis, no, it’s okay…” Breazeal’s soft voice was soothing but only made her more confused. “Look at the design, it’s an old version. This was part of the original cargo the elders brought to Tau, before they were even alive. There are no Orokin here.”

Margulis looked closer and saw her partner was right. This ship was not of any model currently in use in the Origin System. She kept her battalyst trained on its engines anyway, but held her fire. “Are you sure?” she asked, seeking confirmation even as she scanned the ship again. “I don’t want to take any chances leading them here to Tau.”

A quiet voice touched the edge of her mind. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare anyone. I can leave if you want.” The Orokin ship lifted off and started backing away from the Ostron settlement. 

“No, Tertian, come back!” Breazeal called. “That’s the ship with the Geneforge, right? It’s a good idea to have that around, we’re all just a little jumpy after fighting a war with the Orokin. It’s okay, my partner isn’t going to attack you.”

The ships in orbit passed overhead harmlessly and continued on their way. Margulis lowered her gun arms and the energy fields around them fizzled out. “Sorry about that,” she said, directing her words toward the white and gold ship and its pilot. “I’m just concerned for everyone’s safety, that’s all. I wouldn’t want to have accidentally brought war to all the people here, all the innocent Sentients and humans who want nothing to do with the conflict.”

A gentle nudge from Breazeal prompted Margulis to turn away from Tertian’s ship and return to overseeing the construction effort. “Best keep a distance there,” she said on the internal network. “Tertian’s never been much for socializing anyway, and we don’t want to make zem nervous.” 

“I understand,” Margulis replied. “It must be overwhelming, seeing all of you come back and then having to come to terms with humans being here, all at once like this. You said zer ship has a Geneforge?”

“Yeah, it’s an Orokin device for cloning and modifying living organisms. You can even write an entirely new genome and build a species from scratch.”

“I know, I’ve used one before. A long time ago, trying to cure plant diseases, though I’m afraid I wasn’t very good with it. It’s an extraordinary piece of technology, but at the same time it’s got to be the least user-friendly device I’ve ever seen. And that one’s a few centuries older than what I used and probably even worse.”

“I can’t make any sense of it either,” Breazeal said with a short laugh. “But Tertian is a  _ master _ at using the thing. Every planet and moon that has life here is covered in animals that ze helped design.”

Margulis had occasionally caught sight of some of those animals herself in the forests of Gherya. The birds always looked familiar from a distance, the same profiles she knew, until she got closer and realized their coloration was like nothing she’d seen in the Origin System. Once, she had been gliding through the upper levels of the forest and below her trotted a pair of six-legged deer. And in the distance her sensors picked up the sounds of countless other creatures, each one almost recognizable but just dissimilar enough to avoid identification. 

The plains were quieter, populated more with small burrowing mammals and insects, with any more visible specimens hiding away from the commotion at the lakeside. Margulis watched the construction, idly chatting with Breazeal and Reyirre, and was continually amazed at how fast the buildings went up under the combined efforts of Apiaka and the Ostrons working in harmony. An assembly line of Sentient machines stretched both ways around the water, felling timber and ferrying it back to the settlement’s outskirts for the initial processing, after which the human craftsmen molded each beam into the specific shape that was needed. 

Once the initial organization was done the group found themselves working on four houses at once in staggered levels of completeness, while those less suited to the hard labor unloaded their families’ possessions from the floating market. At this rate the Ostrons would have a simple but livable town before the sun set, to be refined and personalized in the coming days and weeks. 

“Look at them go,” Margulis remarked. “I kind of feel bad for not helping out, but on the other hand… I’m not sure I’d be able to keep up.”

“How has Apiaka not needed to swap out power cells yet?” Breazeal wondered aloud. “Any of my drones would need to recharge long before this point given their level of activity. And the humans have been rotating shifts to rest for a while now.”

A sense of pride came over the network from Reyirre, mixed with a noticeable amount of affection. “It’s because of zer drones’ design,” the white Sentient explained. “A design I helped make specially to fit zem, though I’d never wear one myself. Using legs instead of levitation arrays reduces the power consumption by a large margin, plus you can pile on more weight without losing performance. It’s perfect for physical jobs in a high-gravity environment. Not for me though; I prefer to sacrifice a little strength for gracefulness and fluidity.” Reyirre twirled her drone through the air to demonstrate.

“Makes sense. I bet I could make drones like that but bipedal, since I’ve had practice walking in a human body and not falling over.”

“We could have made and used our own warframes,” Margulis pointed out. “Why didn’t we think of that while the war was still on?”

Breazeal activated her voice channel to speak, but no words came out as she pondered the implications of the idea. “You know,” she said, “that would have been a really good idea. Battalysts and conculysts may be the standard tools, but there’s a lot you can do with the right combination of warframe abilities.”

“And if a Tenno was disabled or their Transference link disrupted, we could take over for them and continue the fight,” Margulis said, continuing the train of thought. As soon as she started thinking about the Tenno, her mood dropped. “I just realized… We didn’t even say goodbye to all the Tenno before we left.”

A brief pulse of shock radiated from Breazeal. “You’re right… I was so caught up in everything with Hunhow, and Lua, and the Ostrons, and it completely slipped my mind. They must be so worried by now. I… I kind of want to go back, actually. If only to let them all know we’re safe.”

In their inner realm, Margulis leaned over to embrace her partner. “I was just thinking that myself,” she said. “Though I wouldn’t want to force you to leave your people right after you’ve finally reunited with them all.”

Breazeal picked up the Lotus transport ship on the plains of Isos and moved her single drone inside, and Margulis followed suit. As they rose away from the surface, the Sentient reassured her partner, “You wouldn’t be forcing me. There’s just one person I need to spend some time with first, and I think I know just where to find her.”

“Her?” Margulis asked, as the pair passed through orbital heights and brought a large section of their fleets along to join the simple transport ship. 

“Dreyelin and I aren’t the only women among the Sentients. There’s one more… my mother. Most people here don’t bother with a gender, but for some of us it just fits. Now, focus up ahead, we should be coming up on another planet.”

The lavender ships flew through the empty space in a straight line, Breazeal leading the way according to the map of planetary positions she had gotten from Radziv. A speck appeared in the distance and quickly became recognizable as a disk of swirling clouds. Belts of yellow and brown striped around the gas giant, punctuated by a single oblong region of brilliant blue on the equator. 

“Welcome to Voyreil,” Breazeal announced. “Notable features include Spot One and Spot Two, as I’m sure you can see. That’s Two you’re looking at now, and the first is directly opposite it on the other side of the planet. We believe they’re upwellings of a different gas from deep in the interior, likely driven by internal magnetic fields, but no one has been foolish enough to dive down in there to check. Not even Radziv, which is really saying something.”

“How do you tell them apart, if they’re opposite each other and look the same?”

“Spot One has a little moon orbiting above it, tidally locked to the planet. We haven’t bothered terraforming it, but it makes a nice reference marker. Look over to the left now, there’s one of the large moons that we did terraform. Omeisha is the name.” Breazeal led her partner on a quick circuit around the planet. “There’s Serthim now, another one humans could potentially live on, and then Karjuut.” 

“Wow…” Margulis stared in amazement at the many moons. Even those with no obvious life signs showed evidence of Sentient activity, with unnatural patterns and features in their geography. “You all really put a lot of work into this place. You terraformed all this… just for fun? I wish I had that kind of patience.”

“To be fair, some of it was done before the elders became conscious. But yes, planetary scale art projects are a common hobby for people here. Want to move on to the other gas giant, Nepharia? My mother likes to hang out on some of the moons there.” Breazeal began flying away from Voyreil before she even got an answer. 

Margulis followed with her own group of purple ships. She was beginning to get a sense of where things were in the Tau system now, as she flew toward the last planet she had not yet visited. She felt like she could probably find her way around now even without tapping into Breazeal’s knowledge, though much of that may have been because she herself was spread out over multiple locations and could find her way back to herself. 

Nepharia was a gas giant even larger than Voyreil, primarily a red-orange with streaks and swirls of white. A thin ring circled the planet at an odd angle, inclined significantly relative to the planet’s own rotation and the orbits of its moons. The glint of light reflecting off Sentient drones showed Margulis there were people here among the moons as she had briefly also seen around the previous planet, but from a distance all she had to go on was the feeling of unknown minds nearby which she could not name. 

“These two moons out here are Pyrnios and Pallendi,” Breazeal said, indicating a pair of similarly sized moons that orbited far from the planet. “Pyrnios is where Kyriah has been trying out a new family of plants which are red instead of green. It looks better than it did when I left for the war, so I guess ze’s got it figured out by now. It’s in a four-to-three orbital resonance with Pallendi, where a lot of our long-term data storage is. No biological life is allowed there.”

“That’s pretty cool, a whole moon that’s just one big library. How do you access it? Just fly down and plug a drone into a port somewhere?”

“You’ve got it. Most people leave a connection there permanently. Careful now, we’re going right up close to the planet, so I’d suggest you engage your adaptation circuits set for radiation. Gas giants can be brutal when you’re inside the magnetosphere.”

The pair plunged down toward Nepharia, heading for the innermost large moon, which Breazeal identified as Lyth. The wind of energetic particles grew stronger and stronger as they descended, as did the constant barrage of radio static from the planet’s poles. Margulis inquired about the rings as they passed by, but they were a new feature which had not existed before Breazeal left for the Origin System. 

The surface of Lyth was dotted with volcanoes, many of them actively belching clouds of sulfurous gas and smoke. “This looks like Jupiter’s moon Io,” Margulis remarked. “Is this really where you think your mother will be?” She left most of her ships in orbit and took only a handful down with her toward the surface. 

“It is. She made it this way on purpose. She, um… may like fire and lava a little too much. But if you can look past the fire and black aesthetic she’s a wonderful person… and I owe her a serious apology.” Breazeal led the way through the thick atmosphere to a wide open plain where lava had once flowed, before the volcano supplying it had been diverted to spew in another direction. 

Out in the middle of the emptiness rose a huge castle in the rough shape of a cone, built of black stone and covered with tall minarets and spires. From the peak, a jet of flame burst continually upward to dissipate in the yellow sky. As they approached the structure, Margulis asked her partner, “How do you want me to handle this? Is your mother likely to be okay with me and humans in general? Do you have things you need to say first before I’m introduced?”

“You should have nothing to worry about. Isalle is nothing like Hunhow, that’s for sure. I’m just nervous because I haven’t spoken to her in so long, and… honestly, I wasn’t a great person back then.”

The Lotuses touched down just outside the fortress and Breazeal opened up a small transport ship to send a pair of drones out, perching them on the top of a black spire before she passed control of one to Margulis. She extended her mental presence and called out, “Mother! I’m here. It’s me, N– no… my name is…”

“Breazeal…” came a voice projected into the minds of both visitors to Lyth. “I know. You’ve found a new name for yourself, and I’m so happy that you have something that fits you better now.” A black drone with gold trim emerged from the building, similar to a conculyst but with humanlike arms in place of the clubs. It floated over to the pair, stopping fortuitously in front of the one controlled by Breazeal, and wrapped the lavender battle drone in a tight embrace. 

“You… you know already? From the others, I guess, but… You haven’t tried to contact me since I returned?”

A feeling of warmth and comfort spread across the mental network. “I knew you would find your way to me when you were ready,” Isalle said. “No matter how much I may wish to be a part of your life, it’s yours to live and I can’t demand you share it. The name you were given was just that, a gift, but you’re not obligated to keep it forever. I’m proud of you for finding your truth.”

“But… but I… How can you support me like this, after everything I said to you? I appreciate it, I really do, but how can you just move on and pretend the past never existed? I should have listened to you from the start…” Sorrow and helplessness washed over the group, and within the Lotus headspace, Breazeal’s human form began to cry. “I should have never let Hunhow get to me like that. That’s not who I want to be, but for a long time it’s the kind of person I was.”

“Hush, my child… my daughter. I forgive you. You’ve faced challenges, yes, but you’ve come out of them stronger, and wiser, and you don’t have to go through that ever again. You know the kind of person you want to be now, and I can tell you already  _ are _ that person.”

“I called you a coward! I said you were delusional, for thinking humanity as a whole was innocent and the war needed to only target the upper classes.” 

“And look at you now. You’ve grown. We’re  _ both _ delusional cowards now.”

Breazeal couldn’t help but laugh, though her serious tone quickly returned. “I suppose so,” she said, “but that doesn’t excuse the way I treated you. I’m sorry, mother. Please, tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”

“You already have,” Isalle said warmly. “You’ve set yourself on a better, kinder path, and that’s all I could ever want. There’s no use dwelling on the past, thinking what if things had been different. Make peace with it and move on, and live in the present. After all, it’s what made you who you are today. I’ve heard you met a very special person over there – if you’d never followed your father to war, think how different both your lives would be.” 

Margulis spoke up to introduce herself. “That would be me. My name is Margulis. But don’t give me any credit for making your daughter a good person. She did it all on her own. Breazeal saved my life before I even knew who she was.”

“Things might have been very different indeed then. I’ve been told that without you, none of the Sentients could have returned home. Thank you, Margulis.” Isalle’s abrazolyst glided over to hug the drone that Margulis inhabited. “You and my daughter make a great couple, and I support you.”

Isalle swapped over to a private channel, rather than the semi-isolated corner of the general network they had been speaking on before. “Do you want to hear a secret?” she asked. 

“Uh, sure?” Neither Margulis nor Breazeal quite knew what to expect. 

“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but… I think you did good, sealing Hunhow away like that. I was so worried about you, Breazeal, when you agreed to follow him to war. Hunhow did three quarters of the work in creating you, you know. He was making a child all by himself, and you would have been the first ever Sentient with only a single parent. That worried me, even before you existed, so I stepped in and replaced some of his influence with my own. I do see a lot of Hunhow in you – that passion, the drive to do what you think is right at all costs, even the same recklessness… but I’m glad I don’t see  _ all _ of him in you. Having to choose between staying true to your principles versus loyalty to a fellow fighter, a mentor, a parent… that’s difficult, but I’m proud of you for having the strength to do what was right.”

“Thank you for the kind words, mother, but I’m not sure we did do the best thing. We could have brought him home to Tau after he was safely contained. I could have sent him into the Void the same way I banished Lua.”

“Wait… you put an entire  _ moon _ in the Void? The whole Orokin capitol? How’d Ulaal manage to leave  _ that _ out when ze was telling me about the war?”

“It was immediately before we left the solar system,” Margulis explained. “Orokin command had long since been chased off the moon. We just did it to protect the Tenno. The Void-altered human children who helped us fight.”

“Ah, yes, I recall hearing mention of them. A neutral group who helped both sides. Quite formidable warriors, according to the Sentients who fought them.”

“They’re just kids. Traumatized and alone, their parents dead, persecuted by the same empire whose accident created them. Breazeal and I cared for them, because no one else would.” Margulis sighed heavily, and continued. “We need to go back for them, even if only to give a proper goodbye.”

“You could bring them here,” Isalle offered. “I’ve already got five kids, what’s a few hundred more?”

“Try a few thousand,” Breazeal muttered. “But that won’t be possible, because half of them have their true forms resting on Lua. And the ones who don’t, the half who fought for us rather than the Orokin… they must be getting so worried about us by now.”

“What about just one more kid then? Margulis, you have a mom here if you ever need one.” 

Margulis smiled and raised her battalyst’s inflexible arms in an attempt to return the embrace Isalle had given her. “You know, my biological mother’s greatest dream was to see humans living at Tau, and that’s finally been realized now. She clung onto life just long enough to see the Zariman completed, then died peacefully in her sleep while it was being shown off around the Origin System, before the Void jump accident. Being a carpenter made her strong, but still, she was well over eighty. While no one can ever really replace her, I think she’d be delighted to see how my life has turned out. Thanks, mom.”

Margulis and Isalle seemed content, but something was still bothering Breazeal. She tried to hold in her feelings and enjoy the comfort and warmth that her mother radiated, but she couldn’t shake off the worry in her mind. The more she thought about it, the more her worry grew, until all three could feel it leaking through the thought channels. 

“What is it, Breazeal?” Her mother asked, voice suddenly tinged with concern. 

“I’m just… conflicted, I guess. I have a problem I’ve never had to deal with before. As a Sentient and especially because of the war, I’m used to existing in five hundred places at the same time, but there’s a limit on how widespread a person can be. I can’t be present in both the Origin System and the Tau. I’ve just gotten home after so long and I want to stay here with everyone, with you, but at the same time I feel like I have a duty to the Tenno that I can’t turn my back on.”

“I can’t make a decision for you,” Isalle said, “but know that I will support you in whichever path you choose.”

“The fighting isn’t over in the Origin System,” Breazeal confessed. “We came home because the Orokin Empire is in ruins and Tau is safe, but the remnants have split into a half-dozen factions and the Grineer uprising shows no signs of slowing down. The Tenno could keep things from spiraling out of control, but there’s no way they could ever function without the Lotus to guide them. As far as they can see, we’ve just disappeared one day for no reason, and if we don’t come back soon there will be mass panic and the whole operation will collapse.”

“Maybe Ordis can take over mission control?” Margulis proposed. “We’re going back briefly to say goodbye anyway, so we can officially hand off control at the same time.”

“No, that will never work. Any individual Ordis might be able to guide his Tenno through a given mission, but who would coordinate what the missions are? What needs to be done in what remote corners of the solar system, putting squads in contact en route to the location so we don’t have four operatives getting in each others’ way? Who would hack terminals while the Tenno defend them? Who would supply the reinforcements that allow the Tenno to extract after defending our shipments? Who would coordinate between a lone Tenno operative and their team of distractions so neither is left behind after the other leaves?”

“Okay, you’re right…” Margulis pondered the situation. “It does kind of have to be us running things, doesn’t it. If two thousand Ordises ever figured out they could talk to each other, that would be the end of Tenno sanity in an instant.” 

“How much really needs to be done?” Isalle interjected. “I mean, how frequently do you have to deal with missions like that? Could you spend time in both places?”

Breazeal sighed. “It varies too much to say. But given the chaos in the Origin System, I think we’d have to be there full time. Especially with the Grineer out there. They’ve gone far beyond taking revenge on their slave masters. I’m worried about the innocent lives that might be lost if the Grineer take over everything. We need the Tenno to fight them.”

“Hmmm. Well, if the Grineer take control…” Isalle paused as if waiting for one of the others to complete the thought. 

“Then what? Mother, what should we do?”

“It’s simple,” the Lotus’s mother said. “You take it back.”

Margulis tentatively spoke up. “Are you saying we should go?”

“I don’t want to push you either way, but it looks to me like you’re both already leaning toward living in the Origin System. You’ve found a purpose in life, taking care of all your human children. And if you ever want to visit home again, you know how to get here and I’d love to see you come back.”

“So we have a new war now, against the Grineer and against anyone who tries to rebuild the Orokin Empire,” Breazeal declared. “You’re right, I was already thinking this, you’ve just helped me solidify the thought. I could never abandon the Tenno.”

“Neither could I,” Margulis echoed. “I’d like to make sure the Ostrons get settled, but other than that I’m ready to return when you are. It’s time the Lotus came back for her children.”


	11. Epilogues

**A few years later...**

 

 

“Jumol… it’s time.” A voice came from the Chroma warframe, deceptively soft for the machine’s size and power.

The Tenno in human form next to her leaned against the hard metal of the warframe. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You want to go ahead with the plan now?”

“Yes… I can feel it, even through the Transference link now. I’m dying. We have to do it now.”

“Don’t worry, Serreta, my love. I’ll make the call.” Jumol stood and walked to the next room, and the muffled sounds of talking could be heard through the wall. After a few minutes he came back and sat next to his partner again. “It’s done. We’re on our way.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Exactly what they wanted to hear,” Jumol said. “I’ve never lied so many times in a conversation before in my life, but they’ll help us. Just play the part, and everything will turn out okay.”

The pair sat in silence for a while as their shared orbiter flew them to their destination. At the call from Ordis, letting them know they had arrived, Jumol boarded his landing craft and climbed into his own Transference pod. His old Excalibur, still his favorite warframe despite all the others he’d tried, booted up and received his consciousness. He immediately transferred himself out in front of it, returning to a human appearance but maintaining the link through his warframe to the pod he lay in, and he returned to the central area.

“I’m ready,” he said. “If you’re sure now is the time, let’s go ahead and do this.”

Serreta nodded, and they both made their way to her landing craft. Ordis flew them down through the atmosphere of Earth and gently dropped them off in front of an imposing stone building. The human and Chroma stepped out together and approached the entrance, and were stopped by a pair of humans wearing all black, their faces obscured by red veils.

“We are Jumol and Serreta, here to see Speaker Piacula,” Jumol said. “She is expecting us.”

The guards nodded in unison and stepped aside. “She is indeed. The Speaker awaits you within. Enter, holy children of the Zariman.”

A guide within, adorned in the same black clothing, took the two Tenno to a large central room of the temple and left them at the door. They entered, cautious but trying to seem less afraid than they were. The walls were red and black to match the people who resided here, and in the dim light they could see heavy chains hanging from the ceiling and covering the far wall.

“Welcome, Tenno,” Piacula greeted them. The Speaker of the Veil looked just like any other member, except with a syandana formed from two lobes which extended down narrow tubes to hang their ends behind her knees.

“Greetings, Speaker,” Jumol said with a slight bow. “We heard of your cause and we have come to help you. The Void entity you know as the man in the wall must be sealed away.”

“We call it the Indifference, but that… that is what our prophet called it. Have you met holy Rell?”

“We have. It is through him that we learned of you. Though he has forsaken the cause, we come in his stead and will take up his mantle, if you will have us.”

“Of course. Which of you desires to ascend, and become the vessel we require?”

Serreta raised a hand to get the Speaker’s attention. “I will,” she said. “My body is weak but my mind is strong. Let my warframe be the vessel.”

Piacula nodded. “Of course. Such was the plan for Rell. However, we will need your human form for the ritual. Can you bring it here?”

The Tenno confirmed she could have her Transference pod brought to the temple, and called Ordis to tell him to open the landing craft doors, so the Red Veil operatives could enter. The two Tenno stayed together in the temple while Serreta’s human form was wheeled in on a cart. A moment later, a second pod was brought from elsewhere in the building, an odd design with a glass window in the top.

“Shall we begin?” Piacula asked. “Serreta, dear, we will need your body in the other link in order for your ascension to take place.”

Serreta looked nervously down at her partner, and Jumol smiled back reassuringly. “Just wake up this one last time,” he said. “I’ll be there to help you.”

The Chroma stood perfectly still, balancing so it would not fall over without its operator, and the Transference pod nearby clicked open. Serreta blinked and tried to sit up, only to get dizzy and collapse back to her previous position.

“Help me carry her,” Jumol said. Together he and Piacula lifted the girl out of her link and gently transported her across the room to the other pod. She was impossibly thin, almost every bone in her body visible through her skin, and the two worked together primarily to keep her comfortable rather than through any need to lessen the weight.

Once she was safely laying in the provided pod, Piacula tuned the Transference frequency to connect to the Chroma once again. Serreta’s eyes closed, and the warframe became active again. Red Veil members began filing into the room, taking up positions in two long lines down the sides of the main hall.

“Void! You of infinite power, eternal potential, it is you who we oppose.” The Speaker’s cry echoed through the temple. “Old as stars you may be, but even stars die. What is evil but indifference, and what are you if not indifferent? Holy child of the Void, Saint Serreta of the Tenno, you will be a harness placed upon the Void and its vast uncaring power.”

Piacula moved up next to the Transference pod where Serreta lay, and Jumol followed on the other side. Piacula ran her hands over the surface, and the glass window over the Tenno’s head and chest rose up and was removed. She reached into her robes and withdrew a small vial of oily liquid, swirling the same red and black as everything around it.

“Do not awaken, blessed one. Drinking kuva weakens the link between body and mind, and you must be in the vessel, away from this impure flesh.” Piacula reached down into the Transference pod and slowly poured the kuva into the human body’s mouth, then held her hand there tightly to prevent the body’s reflexes from spitting it out. Serreta’s dreaming form swallowed the liquid, and immediately the Chroma housing her mind dropped to its knees.

Serreta clutched at her head, dizzy and confused, but when the feeling passed she stood up straighter than before. She looked down at her hands and body, and asked, “Did it work? I feel stronger now. Like I used to, before my body started giving out.”

She walked over to the pod and looked down at her former human body. While a typical human body left without a mind would persist in a coma, Serreta’s willpower had been the only thing keeping this one alive through the sickness it had endured for so long. Already there was no breath to make its chest rise and fall, and Serreta dreamed no more. She was the warframe now, and nothing else.

“Now, most holy saint and savior, step up to the chains.” The Speaker moved to the far wall, expecting the Tenno to follow. “Your purpose is single and solitary: to be a pure, hollow vessel to contain the Indifference and lock it away from our world. Do not think… do not speak… do not exercise a will which it might corrupt… Your old life has ended, but you have been born anew. Come, and let us place the seals.”

“I don’t think so.” Serreta’s voice was strong and confident now. “Thank you for saving my life, but we’ll be leaving now.”

Every member of the congregation reached simultaneously into a hidden pocket of their robes and revealed a dark dagger, held ready to prevent their Vessel’s escape. But the Tenno did not shrink back in fear; this was all accounted for in the plan. Jumol sent a surge of Void energy through his Transference link, willing himself to return to his warframe – or rather, for his warframe to return to him.

The Excalibur appeared around him in a swirl of energy, and the moment Jumol was back in control of it, he released a blinding flash of light which stunned the crowd. Serreta shed her pelt to form a sentry, and she carried her previous body over her shoulder as they both ran. Many voices shouted after them and the sounds of fighting echoed down the halls, but no one caught up to the fleeing Tenno.

“Ordis, get us out of here!” The moment both set foot inside the landing craft it took off, before the door was even shut behind them. Serreta focused and called her pelt to appear back around her. It was likely capable of wreaking total destruction on the Red Veil enclave, but she had no desire to harm those who had helped save her any more than was necessary for her escape.

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” Jumol said. “You’re alive! This is the best thing that could have happened today. …Why are you still carrying that?”

Serreta shrugged, and laid her own dead body down on the floor. “I didn’t really want them to have it. I know it’s useless now, but I’m still kind of attached to it. Even if I’m not, you know, literally attached to it.”

“Makes sense. I guess we should tell the Lotus what we just did. I’m sure they’ll both want to know.”

“We could… or we could just let everyone think I’m dead. You never know when it might be useful to have a surprise person nobody knows about. Besides, I’ll get to attend my own funeral and that sounds kind of cool. Do you suppose they’ll let me give a speech?”

 

* * *

 

 

Vucub-Came Macula was covered in corpses. For hundreds of meters around on the dark plains, Grineer lay on the hard earth, displaying all manner of brutal injuries. The lucky ones sported a single clean gunshot wound in the center of their forehead. Those less fortunate were missing limbs or had ragged holes and gashes all over their bodies, bleeding out liters upon liters of blood which only partially soaked into the soil.

In the midst of the carnage, two identical twin girls surveyed their work with pride. There was precious little room to stand without having one foot or the other on a corpse, but it mattered little to them. Both were thoroughly drenched in Grineer blood, soaking red through their once-golden clothes, and tired from the battle they had just fought. The girls sheathed their weapons, and one reached up to touch a tiny slice on her cheek where a Grineer blade, the hand that held it already severed, had nicked her as it fell.

The girl lowered her hand and spat on the nearest corpse. “For our father,” she hissed.

The other put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Enough,” she said. “He’s been avenged a thousand times over.”

“It’s not enough. I could wipe every last Grineer from existence and it wouldn’t be enough.”

“I feel the same way, but it may be time we moved on to a new purpose. We’ve spent so long now killing Grineer for him. What if, instead… we killed Grineer for ourselves?”

The first girl couldn’t help but giggle despite the bitterness she felt. “Just because it’s fun? I think that’s something I could get behind. I like the way you think.”

The other stepped closer and moved her hand from her sister’s shoulder to around her waist. She leaned her head on her sister’s shoulder and said softly, “Remember Father’s teachings. He would want us to let go of him. It’s the first tenet of the Vain Faith: love yourself above all else.”

“I know, you’re right.” The girl returned the side embrace and turned a little toward her twin. “Though of course, we’ve always had a bit of an advantage where self-love is concerned…” In unison the two turned to face each other and each gently caressed the other’s cheek, covering the single tiny asymmetry between them. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, then both leaned forward at once to join in a passionate kiss.

The pair swayed as they pressed against each other, their eyes closed – until the one with the scratch on her cheek stumbled over a dead Grineer’s arm and sat down hard on its armored torso. Blood squirted out of the fresh corpse’s wounds under the impact, and the unmarked girl knelt down in the growing puddle to return to her sister’s embrace.

“Hold up a second.” The sitting girl pulled her twin close but looked over her shoulder at a dark spot in the sky. “I think we’ve got more tube-men coming.”

“Aw, but we just killed so many. Don’t we deserve a break?”

“We do, but we can take it after this wave. Just think, we’ll have to make up for lost time… Come on, we’ve got to get ready.”

The girls stood and readied their weapons again as the Grineer ship approached. It stopped in the air a short distance away, and a small shuttle dropped from its underside and landed on the plains. A group of Grineer stepped out and walked toward the twins, every one holding up both hands in the air with no weapons drawn. The two girls stayed ready for a fight, always wary of a potential trap.

The clones stopped maybe twenty feet away from the pair and slowly got down on one knee, averting their eyes from the humans they faced. One from among them stepped forward further to address the girls in a rough, halting voice. “No fight. You, Grineer killers. Fight, you. Is death. We serve.”

The girls relaxed their stance but kept their weapons in hand. “Do we believe it?” one asked softly to her sister.

“I don’t know…” The other girl raised her voice to interrogate the Grineer. “Why serve us? To avoid death, you could just stay away from us! We are Orokin, and you are traitors to the Empire! Why should we allow you back?”

The Grineer, engineered to be simple-minded workers, struggled to comprehend and to formulate an answer. “You, like us. The same. But. You… understand. Each other. We, the same, but. Not brothers. You teach. We learn, be better. Better servants. Fight, who you say. Make more, to serve.”

The sisters whispered to each other again. “I think they’re sincere, but… Do we really want them?”

“Might be nice to have slaves again, as long as we don’t have to be around them all the time. We could rebuild the Empire.”

“The Orokin are finished. Even with the Sentients gone, the Tenno betrayers are still around. We have to look forward, focus on ourselves. We could build a  _ new _ empire, with us as the queens.”

“Now you’re talking… You, Grineer! Is every one of you on that ship going to serve us too?” The girl pointed up at the large vessel, still hovering in the thin air of Pluto.

“Yes. We, swear. We work, for you. Only you.”

“Do we accept?” whispered the one who had challenged the Grineer to her sister.

“I’m tempted,” the other replied. “The first time we return to Pluto after Father died, we get to put the slaves who murdered him back in their place. It feels right.”

“Okay. Let’s do it. A new empire… all for us.” The two put away some of their weapons but each kept a sword ready, just in case. “We accept your servitude,” one shouted to the Grineer. “You will fight for us, and we will destroy any opposition until all Grineer belong to us. If you have cloning facilities, you will select as breeding stock only those with the greatest loyalty to us.”

The Grineer at the front of the group bowed. “We, obey. We serve, you teach. So we, understand. Each other’s, souls. As you, know yours.”

The two sisters held hands and stepped a little closer to each other. “More than just our souls,” one muttered with a wink.

“Exactly what I was thinking. But we don’t need to let them know that. The poor soulless beasts would get so confused.” The soon to be queen picked up a radio from her belt and spoke into it. “Hey, Jordas, pick us up. And don’t fire on the other ship here.”

“Yes, masters,” came the response, in the Cephalon pilot’s usual sullen, dejected tone.

“Hey, cheer up! You’re not the only slave around anymore. You’d better keep us happy or you might find yourself replaced. I’ve always wondered what would happen if you left a Cephalon in the middle of the Infestation, haven’t you?”

She put away the transmitter and looked back to the Grineer, still kneeling among the bodies of their fallen clones. “You’re still here. Why?”

“Orders… sir. What, must we, do?”

The sisters exchanged one more glance, then the other spoke to command her new thralls. “In addition to converting all other Grineer you encounter to our service, I want you… to start collecting kuva.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Good morning, old friend.” A tall man in formal black clothing stepped into the room and pushed the door shut behind him. A hint of a red shirt could been seen beneath his jacket, matching the vibrant dark red of his spiky hair. In one hand he held a single rose flower with a long stem, and in the other a ceramic vase. He padded over to take a seat on the low table near the bed, brushing away game pieces to clear a space.

“What, not going to greet me? Has the disease finally taken your voice? Oh, how dreadful that must be, being unable to cry out in pain, to call for your son… being unable to curse me to your final breath.” Ballas snickered. “The way you’re going, soon you won’t even need breath. You’ll be alive, yes...” He put a hand to his chest and feigned shock. “As eternal as even  _ me _ , isn’t that something… But I’m afraid you may not find the experience very pleasant.”

The figure on the bed stirred and reached out. “What’s that, old friend? You want to play a game of Komi with me? I’m afraid I’m not in the mood for games right now, I’m awaiting a progress report from some very important people.” Ballas set down the vase and flower he held, still separate, and withdrew a communicator from his pocket. He made a show of turning it over in his hands and examining it.

Just as he was about to place the device back in his pocket, it lit up and started beeping at him. “Well, would you look at that,” Ballas remarked. “Speak of the devil… and the one meant to be stopping him calls. Excuse me a moment, old friend...” He held the communicator up to his ear and listened to the person on the other end.

“Explain yourself.” His brow was furrowed, nose beginning to wrinkle into a sneer of distaste. “What do you mean, you don’t have it? It was delivered right to you!” Each new outburst was louder than the last as anger overtook the former Executor. “How could you let the Tenno devils escape?”

No amount of excuses made Ballas any happier. “Oh, right, there were two of them,” he said dryly. “Of course there were two of them! You knew that beforehand! Now you need to be thinking, where are you going to get a third?” He paused to listen again. “Yes, I want you to try again. Fight fire with fire. Fight Void demons with Void demons. Though my faith in you has been challenged...”

More excuses came across the communications channel. “Enough. I don’t want to hear from you again until you’ve done it. And in case you fail me again, I will be thinking of having you replaced, Speaker Piacula. Or should I call you… Archimedean Rosalind?” The woman on the other end gasped. “Oh, don’t worry,” Ballas told her. “Honestly, me telling someone about your secret identity is the least of your problems. How are those robotic eyes you got holding up? It sure would be a shame if they both contained a small amount of explosives and a remote detonator, wouldn’t it?”

Ballas held the device away from his ear and was about the end the call when another thought occurred to him. “One more thing. The Tenno betrayers know where you are now. Those two you let escape will tell the rest. Get out of Iron Wake right now and never go back. ...It doesn’t matter. Let the Grineer have it, for all I care.” With that, he punched the disconnect button and pocketed the device.

“Sorry you had to hear that,” he said to the sick man in the bed. “It’s hardly polite to mix work with a personal visit like this, but it just couldn’t wait. I’m sure you understand how urgent things can be sometimes… such as bringing a fugitive to justice before the last remnants of the court system have been wiped out. I’m afraid you’re a little late for that mission now.”

Ballas picked up the rose and twirled it between his fingers. “What’s that, you’re shaking your head? Careful you don’t do that too much, or you might unplug your brain. We couldn’t have that, now could we? You really think I’ll believe you and your son tracked me down because you wanted me to come back and lead what was left of the Orokin? That you  _ didn’t _ want me to stand trial? You forget… we  _ were _ friends once, and I know you better than you might think.”

“How’s Isaah doing these days, anyway?” He waited for an answer that he knew would never come. “You don’t know? That’s right, you haven’t seen him in a while. Rest assured, he’s still alive. He’s even right here, in the building!” Ballas gently picked up the vase. “You must love him very much. Here, let me leave you this rose as a reminder of him...”

He dropped the flower into the vase and held it up in front of him. Immediately the rose began to wilt and its petals dropped off one by one, withering to brown before they even reached the floor. Ballas feigned shock at the sight. “Oh dear, it seems I’ve slipped up and used kuva instead of water again. How silly of me. You know how deadly that elixir of life is to anything other than an immortal Orokin. I hope you don’t get the wrong idea, old friend… just because the symbol of your son was killed by kuva, that doesn’t mean the same will happen to the real one.”

Ballas set the vase with its wilted stem aside. He leaned forward to come face to face with the figure in front of him and growled, “No, that would be much too kind. Besides, I like my current appearance more than his anyway. Even if I took control of your body and ripped him apart with your own hands, it would be better than you deserve.” He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the bed.

“You’re not the first person to hurt me, you know. A friend’s betrayal is not even the worst. No, the worst pain I’ve been through came from the one I intended to call my wife. Condemned to death, then stolen away hours before the grave to become a puppet for the Sentients. It would be better if she were dead, rather than with those vile blasphemies. I hold out hope that one day she might be freed and return to me, knowing all the while that such a day will likely never come. And  _ that _ is the pain which you will suffer for what you’ve done. I’m not going to kill the one you love. You will merely see him whisked away by a powerful force outside your control, taken and enslaved, his body used by others while he may still remain alive inside. Your son will be lost and  _ probably _ dead, but not knowing for sure will torment you forever.”

Having decided on a course of action now for the second Dax who had confronted him, the one not yet infected with a terrible virus, Ballas retrieved the communicator and placed a call to the last address he had just been in contact with. “Speaker… you’re still alive, I see. And more surprisingly, you’re still taking my calls. Of course, if you didn’t, I have this beautiful red button here that’s just begging for a finger to push it...”

Curt, angry words came through in reply. “Right to business, is it? Well, I was just thinking about your spectacular failure with the Tenno again, and I’ve realized this opens up a new opportunity for us both. I have a new Vessel for you, one that literally  _ can’t _ run away… because it’s a Dax.” Ballas rolled his eyes as he listened to Piacula on the other end. “I don’t care if the lack of Void powers makes a difference! You’re going to chain this Dax up and hang him from the ceiling anyway! And if he dies, or if the hell-beast is sighted again despite the seal,  _ then  _ you can go looking for another Tenno.”

Ballas hung up on the Red Veil leader again. “As for you, old friend,” he continued to the figure laying before him, “You will be my masterpiece creation. Not just any Excalibur, no… a better version, a black variant, never to be controlled by one of those demons. That infested Dax helmet looks out of place though, we’ll have to replace that with something more fitting. New abilities too. I’m not much of a fan of the radial blind, given what happened to my love...” His voice trailed off, and he smiled to himself as he left the room to go find his toolbox.

 

* * *

 

 

A small crowd of dusty, windswept villagers gathered at the edge of their settlement. None spoke a word, only watching with tired eyes and waiting for their last few members to arrive. A man poked his head out through the doorway of a nearby house and looked around, and at the wave from his neighbor stepped out onto the red sand. His family trailed behind, taking fearful glances down every alley as they made their way to join the others. They mingled with the crowd, and those nearest the town looked back toward where they had come from.

There was no movement nor sound from the buildings, many now half-buried in sand, others demolished entirely. A light breeze blew down the main street, and those at its end shuddered despite the warmth. An older man stepped out of the crowd and turned to address them all.

“Let us form the mourning circle… once again.”

The villagers spread out to form the traditional circle that they were all too familiar with, but found the ring smaller than they remembered. Years of raids by the Golden Skymen had left their village almost unable to sustain itself, as children were abducted faster than they grew up. They had been granted a reprieve for a little while, when their god-king Inaros turned on his former masters and began protecting the people of Mars, but as the Skymen had disappeared a greater threat came to take its place.

The Infested did not kidnap children. Those monsters of twisted flesh cared for nothing except killing, and town after town fell before them as they swept northward through Hellas and Tyrrhenum provinces in an unstoppable tide. Much of Amenthes too had succumbed to the plague, though the people here knew they had a protector watching over them, and the ravenous hordes were thinner than they had been described by fleeing neighbors from the south.

But this town had survived, at least for now. They had weathered attacks before but none such as this one, which had seen even the most capable fighters cowering in basements and praying for salvation. As they stood now in the eerie calm outside, it seemed that salvation had indeed found them.

Unease and reverence both flickered across the faces of all those assembled as their leader held up a great chunk of metal, once gleaming but scoured by sand. Its edges were ragged and loose wires hung from its interior, but all recognized the face of their savior.

“Inaros has returned to the sky,” the old man proclaimed. “Today we mourn our people who were lost to the Infested plague, as we have mourned before. But we give thanks to our protector, our king, who descended from the sky this day to save us. In a whirlwind of sand he rose, and drove the beasts away. He answered our prayers.”

The crowd murmured in unison, “Thank you, Inaros, protector spirit of the sand. Blessed be your name, Inaros, and great be your deeds. We honor you, Inaros.”

“We do not mourn for our protector,” the old man continued, “for he is eternal. His spirit resides not in mortal forms but in the sky, and he guards us still. But the day may come when he wishes to reclaim his metal vessel. Let us collect the pieces of his body and transport them to the great temple. And when we are there, let us remain to watch over him as he has watched over us. Today we mourn what remains of our town, for we shall not return to this place again.”

 

Beyond the sky to which the villagers looked, a Liset orbited the red planet, and within lay the spirit of Inaros in his somatic link. The pod clicked open of its own accord, sensing the lack of a warframe link, and the boy inside sat up and rubbed his eyes. He shook his head to clear the residual Transference echoes and looked out into the ship.

“You’re finally awake,” came a voice, and a perfect copy of the boy shimmered into existence in front of him. “You’ve really outdone yourself with failures this time, kiddo,” the false Tenno continued. “That warframe’s toast. How are you going to play at protecting people now?”

“Shut up. I don’t have to listen to you.” Rell squeezed his eyes shut again, but the being he called the man in the wall still stood there when he looked again.

“Oh, but you do,” the entity said, smirking. “You can’t get rid of me. You don’t  _ deserve _ to get rid of me. Who would point out your incompetence then? You need me.”

“I could really do without you right now,” Rell said. “Besides… I did good down there.”

“Half the village died! You failed, Rell. Again, as you always do. Look down at those people and face your mistakes.”

“Half the village  _ survived. _ None of them would have made it without my help. If I’ve saved even one life, then that means it was worth it.”

The man in the wall laughed, a cruel, mocking sound that pierced to the depths of Rell’s mind. “I suppose you think you’re being selfless? How noble of you, sacrificing yourself to save others. If you really cared about these people, you’d keep your warframe alive to keep fighting for them.”

Rell’s mouth gaped open in astonishment. “Last time, you told me if I really cared then I would keep fighting for Mars even if it killed me. Which is it? Or are you just determined to find fault no matter what I do?”

“Look at the pain they’re in. They’ve all lost people dear to them today. Wouldn’t death be kinder? It’s your fault they’re separated from those they loved.” The doppelgänger extended a hand. “Wouldn’t death be kinder to you as well? Just run away from all your mistakes, run and see your mother again.”

“Don’t you  _ dare _ bring up my mother!” Rell jumped down out of the somatic link and released a beam of Void energy toward the apparition.

The lance of blue light passed through the man in the wall’s chest harmlessly and struck the bulkhead behind him. “Oh, won’t you ever learn? Attacking me like that will only make me stronger. So go ahead, keep doing it. Try to kill me again, so you can fail one more time.”

“You’re full of shit, and you know what? I don’t have to take orders from you. You always say you’re looking out for me, pushing me to do better, but you’re not! You’re just a bully who enjoys tormenting me.” Rell paced back and forth as he lectured the phantom in his ship. “I  _ know _ that I helped people today, I’ve saved many lives down there, and that means more than anything you could ever say to me. I know my worth and I  _ refuse _ to let you deny it any longer.”

He stopped directly in front of his duplicate and stared it in the face. “Now, if you really want to help me get stronger and do better – which I’m not sure I believe anymore, but I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt one last time – if that’s what you want, then go ahead. But  _ I _ get to define what that means, you hear me? You help me on  _ my _ terms, or you can go right back into that wall and never come out again. Understood?”

The man in the wall raised one eyebrow. The corner of his mouth twitched upward for just a moment, then he silently faded out of existence.


End file.
